Suite dels Ocells grows from Auerbach’s homage to Pablo Casals. In the composer’s note for the original solo cello version, Auerbach writes that she wanted the work to celebrate Casals’s spirit and legacy, and that she entered the project through research into Casals’s life, recordings, interviews and musical world.

The work draws together two symbolic presences in Casals’s life: Bach’s solo suites and the Catalan song El cant dels Ocells, or Song of the Birds. Auerbach describes the song as the heart of the piece, while the work’s development follows the spirit of Bach’s suites.

The violin version carries this lineage into another solitary instrument. The result is not an imitation of Bach or Casals, but a contemporary remembrance: a suite in which the song of birds becomes a vessel for exile, memory, freedom and artistic inheritance.

• Form Suite for solo violin.
• Duration Approximately 27 minutes.
• Lineage Bach, Casals and El cant dels Ocells.

The solo violin version of La Suite dels Ocells. Hommage to Pablo Casals received its world premiere on 29 September 2023 at the Casals Forum, Carl Bechstein Saal, Kronberg.

The premiere was performed by Mihaela Martin, violin.

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

The original cello version of La Suite dels Ocells was composed in 2015. The violin version, completed in 2023, extends the work’s solitary architecture into a new instrumental voice.

Public publisher, premiere, programme and related reference links for Suite dels Ocells. Listening and related materials are gathered here only, separate from the publisher links above.