MARLBORO FEST 40TH ANNIVERSARY

In a time where Mozart performances are dominated by an obsession with repeats, metronomic exactitude, precision of ensemble, and an approach that often combines slickness with impersonality, Casals might seem to have been a cellist forced to retire because of consistently faulty intonation and wavering technical control and who therefore turned exclusively to conducting when in his nineties (as he was when these recordings were made). He felt that if anyone wanted to hear what an eighteenth-century orchestra sounded like, the musicians need only play off-key—although he himself has been latterly criticized for occasionally ragged ensemble. Yet, for me, Casals was first and always a transcendent musician who loved music, who brought to Mozart the profound wealth of his own human experience, musical insight based on decades of visceral study, and a rare ability to communicate the richness and excitement he felt so deeply. His orchestra was totally responsive and committed. And what an o