La Suite dels Ocells grows from Auerbach’s desire to create a true homage to Pablo Casals, celebrating his spirit and legacy rather than producing a historical imitation. The composer approached the work through extensive research into Casals’s life, recordings, interviews and musical world.

Two works stand at the center of the piece: Bach’s cello suites and El cant dels Ocells. Auerbach identifies the Catalan song as the heart of the suite, while the work’s unfolding follows the spirit of Bach’s solo cello writing.

The result is a contemporary solo cello suite in which birdsong becomes memory, inheritance and moral presence. The music looks back toward Casals and Bach while remaining unmistakably rooted in Auerbach’s own voice.

• Form Suite for solo violoncello.
• Duration Approximately 23 minutes.
• Lineage Bach, Casals and El cant dels Ocells.

La Suite dels Ocells was commissioned by Washington Performing Arts, supported by Jane and Calvin Cafritz.

The world premiere took place on 8 November 2015 at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., performed by Amit Peled.

Auerbach describes an extensive research process before beginning the work. She studied Casals’s life and legacy, listened to his recordings, read interviews and memoirs, and even worked with an edition of Bach’s cello suites containing Casals’s own edits and remarks.

The work began during an artist residency in Switzerland, in a twelfth-century watchtower in Stein am Rhein. Music sketches, ink drawings and mixed-media paintings developed together as part of the creative process.

Eventually, the piece revealed its form through the connection between Bach’s cello suites and El cant dels Ocells. Auerbach writes that she did not want to imitate Bach, but to remain true to her own time and voice as a composer.

Pablo Casals made El cant dels Ocells one of the emblematic songs of his exile and public life. In Auerbach’s suite, the song becomes more than a quotation or reference; it becomes an emotional and spiritual center.

The cello’s historical association with Casals gives the original version a special directness. The unaccompanied instrument carries the memory of Bach, the voice of Catalonia and the solitude of a single performer speaking across time.

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