6 February
9:30–10:30 Bernard Meillat: “Casals at Marlboro” (Guest lecture)
Marlboro is a special place for Casals, which reveals a great deal about his personality and his way of making music. It took all the convincing power of his friends Rudolf Serkin and Sasha Schneider to get him to agree to spend two weeks in Vermont in 1960, for the Festival’s 10th anniversary. He was so pleased that he would return every year from 1962 to 1973. It was for him a fountain of youth, and he called Marlboro the Mecca of Music. Serkin said he was the youngest of all the young musicians there. He gives master classes and, above all, conducts the orchestra. He takes his role seriously and is often extremely demanding. It is very interesting to compare the rehearsals filmed in Marlboro (where the orchestra is two-thirds junior) and Puerto Rico (where there are only seasoned musicians). And to see how Casals' attitude when rehearsing, teaching or playing chamber music could differ depending on circumstances.
Bernard Meillat has a dual education in the Humanities (French literature and ancient languages) and music (piano and musicology), culminating in a dissertation on Debussy and the Symbolist poets. After teaching for 15 years, he managed Radio Classique in Paris from 1991 to 2005, and the music channel of the Belgian Radio from 2006 to 2012. He founded the Musiq'3 Festival in Brussels in 2011 and has been a member of the Queen Elisabeth Competition team since 2014. A Casals enthusiast from an early age, he has been working with Marta Casals on her audiovisual archives since the late 80s. He became musical advisor to the Pau Casals Foundation and artistic director of the Pau Casals Festival in 2017.