In the crowded years that followed, a memory I particularly cherish is one of a performance (24 November 1931) of Strauss’s Don Quixote at Queen’s Hall under Henry Wood, with Pau Casals as the cellist and myself playing the solo viola part with him. In the second part of the programme Casals played Haydn’s concerto in D. He was obviously in a nervous state just before going on to the platform and turned to me clasping both hands together, saying in a piteous tone: ‘Pray for me!’ Needless to say the performance was magnificent. Dear and great artist. One of the privileges of that generation was to hear him in his prime. A grand soul was housed in that small body – a body so small that it was always a wonder how easily his left hand climbed over the range of the huge cello he generally played upon. What supremely distinguished him was his consummate musical understanding, but this technique itself was fascinating, above all perhaps the cunning with which he would change position on the long finger-board. A vice of some cellists is an overdone portamento due no doubt, in some measure, to the great distances between certain intervals owing to the length of the finger-board. Casal’s portamento was miraculously discreet, no matter what the width of the interval. << less