Practice makes the heart grow fonder ... wait....

Pablo Casals died 40 years ago today.



I listened to one of his Bach Cello Suite recordings over breakfast. This is usually my time for reading (likely), Desert Island Discs (likelier) or catching up with How I Met Your Mother (likeliest - loathe though I am to admit it). But today it was Suite No. 3 in C Major, with yoghurt, pineapple slices and milky coffee. The Bourée, my favorite, I listened to twice.

I realise that the Bourée is a fairly rogue preference (there are few things in life as satisfying as the last four bars of of the Prelude from Suite No. 1) but it remains my firm favourite. This is largely because it featured on an archaic computer game that my sister and I used to play together when we were little, and hearing it even now is a nostalgic pang - like the vertiginous lungful of a familiar perfume in the air, as a complete stranger walks past, but way less romantic. (I'm not sure it can get less romantic than Windows 97.) I can’t even remember what that game was called, but it was definitely geeky and great. My sister is actually a fabulous cellist, and hearing her play the Bourée is something of an emotional overload. Pang city.

Sometime during this reverie about my sister, and the joy of Windows 97, iTunes moved onto the Gigue, and so my thoughts shifted back to Pablo Casals, and to one of my very favourite anecdotes, which is this:

When Casals, one of the great cellists of the 20th Century, was in his nineties, he was asked why he it was that he continued to practice the cello for several hours each day. He replied: “Because I’m beginning to notice some improvement.”

I can’t get enough of that story. 

I love it, only because it’s obviously great, but because it speaks to me of two very different truths about practicing, and about being a musician.

That a man who was widely considered to be among the great masters of his instrument would still want to keep practicing in his nineties is certainly heartening. Artistry and the bliss of facility are worth dedicating your life to, and practice is just a happy and productive part of that.

Another interpretation of this quip, however, alludes to the gloomier reality of the practice room. The pinched tendons, blistered fingers and aching self-esteem. The hours that can go by seemingly without improvement. Days, weeks, the best part of a century and still I’m playing scales?! Every passage re-started. The untiring metronome. A fumbling thumb.

I know very few players who haven’t been bowed down at one point or another by the self-flagellating approach to improvement that we learn from the beginning, along with clefs and time signatures.

Happily enough, there is another brilliant Casals story for those moments when it’s all a bit much, and for days when your hands feel like aubergines. This story was used in the recent film A Late Quartet, but the anecdote, as recounted by Christopher Walken’s character, was actually borrowed from Cellist, the autobiography of Gregor Piatigorsky:

'“Mr. Casals.” I was introduced to a little bald man with a pipe. He said that he was pleased to meet young musicians such as Serkin and me. Rudolf Serkin […] had played before my arrival, and Casals now wanted to hear us together. Beethoven’s D-Major Sonata was on the piano. “Why don’t you play it?” asked Casals. Both nervous and barely knowing each other, we gave a poor performance that terminated somewhere in the middle. “Bravo! Bravo! Wonderful!” Casals applauded. Francesco brought the Schumann Cello Concerto, which Casals wanted to hear. I never played worse. Casals asked for Bach. Exasperated, I obliged with a performance matching the Beethoven and Schuman. “Splendid! Magnifique!” said Casals, embracing me. Bewildered, I left the house. I knew how badly I had played, but why did he, the master, have to praise and embrace me? This apparent insincerity pained me more than anything else. The greater was my shame and delight when, a few years later, I met Casals in Paris. We had dinner together and played duets for two cellos, and I played for him until late at night. Spurred by his great warmth, and happy, I confessed what I had thought of his praising me in Berlin. He reacted with sudden anger. He rushed to the cello, “Listen!” He played a phrase from the Beethoven sonata. “Didn’t you play this fingering? Ah, you did! It was novel to me…it was good… and here, didn’t you attack that passage with up-bow, like this?” he demonstrated. He went through Schumann and Bach, always emphasizing all he like that I had done. “And for the rest,” he said passionately, “leave it to the ignorant and stupid who judge by counting only the faults. I can be grateful, and so must you be, for even one note, one wonderful phrase,” I left with the feeling of having been with a great artist and a friend.“‘ 

So today I decided to make like Pablo, shift my Eye-of-Sauron focus away from the flaws, and listen out for the little things that satisfy and inspire.

One wonderful phrase. One note.

Maybe that way I’ll be still be practicing when I’m in my nineties. I’ll be drinking my breakfast through a straw and dancing to the beat of my metronome.

--

My roommate came in as I was writing this at the kitchen table. She was carrying a gigantic pumpkin and a small saw, but I chose to ignore this.

"What are you writing about?”

“Pablo Casals. Sort of."

"Okay… why?"

"He died today-

"WHAT????!!!"

" - forty years ago."

…

"You’re going to put this in aren’t yo-" 

"Oh most definitely.”