Gaspar Cassadó

Barcelona paid for Gaspar Cassadó to go to Paris and study with Pablo Casals. His father, the church musician and composer Joaquim Cassadó, had taught him first. As a soloist and chamber player he worked across Europe. His compositions are mostly for his instrument: the Suite for Solo Cello of 1926, whose three movements set Spanish dance and song beside things learned from Kodály and Ravel, Requiebros, and the Cello Concerto. He also wrote pieces in the manner of earlier composers and let them appear under those composers' names — the Toccata after Frescobaldi is his own invention. He died in Madrid in 1966. Furtwangler and Beecham were among the conductors he played under, and Arthur Rubinstein and Jose Iturbi among his partners at the piano. He taught at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena and in Cologne. His orchestral arrangement of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata was first performed in Berlin in 1928 with Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting.