Takeichiro Hirai Brings Pablo Casals to Life

Midori and Ozawa are Japan's memorable contributions to the world of music, no doubt, but forget you not Takeichiro Hirai, a cellist Pablo Casals himself had named his successor. Yes, Takeichiro Hirai, 77, is unmistakably yet another valuable contribution Japan has made to the world of music. The following is a testimony of Hirai's musicianship so richly nurtured through his close association with the undisputed cello virtuoso Pablo Casals.

A while ago in June, Takeichiro Hirai celebrated his 60th anniversary as a concert cellist in a memorable concert to the accompaniment of his own son conducting an orchestra. Like Ivry Gitlis, the violinist, Hirai has his own way of outplaying the notes just as his master Pablo Casals notoriously outplayed J.S. Bach's Cello Suites.

Hirai's Dvorak Concerto sounds hilarious as he sways and shakes in execution as Casals often played his favorite Bach Suite #3 like a set of dance music. It's absolutely ingenious and buoyant, but that's not the way modern cellists treat the piece.
Yet, that is Dvorak as Casals taught him. Hirai lives up to his master's manner of inhaling and exhaling music and he has no shred of doubt about the authenticity of Casals' musicianship.

Speaking of Hirai's swaying and shaking in execution, the Dvorak as he played it sounded more so that evening. Curious whether age was telling on him, this desk checked the live recording of his Dvorak played in 1961 in Tokyo in his triumph performance under the baton of Pablo Casals himself. Surprisingly enough, Hirai was swaying and shaking 54 years before the same way he was that evening - an evidence of his firm conviction how Dvorak should be.

Pablo Casals left us his legendary recording of Bach's Cello Suites and along with it his art of the cello in the person of Takeichiro Hirai.