Pablo Casals was born in the Catalan city of Vendrell, to the southwest of Barcelona, on the 29th December 1876. The son of a musician, he began his musical studies in Barcelona in 1888, dedicating himself in particular to the cello. His debut, with Lalo's Concerto, took place first in Madrid in 1897. In 1901, Casals made his first trip to America and then in 904, he went to the White House, where he performed Don Quixote conducted by Richard Strauss himself. The extraordinary encounter with Thibaud and Cortot provided the occasion for forming the Cortot-Thibaud-Casals Trio in 1904; it was the most important artistic group in the 20th century up until the 1980s, when events forced to disband. In 1939, under the impulse of the Spanish civil war, Casals himself left Spain for good, as a sign of protest against the Franco regime, and moved to the nearby French town of Prades in the Pyrenees. He was a protagonist of post-war years when he conducted, played the cello and acted as artistic director of no less than two Festivals: Prades (1950) and Puerto Rico (1957) and solitary interpreter of the very famous Suites for solo violoncello by J.S.Bach.