Robert Casadesus - Biography

Biography

Robert Casadesus was born in Paris and studied there at the Conservatoire with Louis Diémer, taking a Premier Prix (First Prize) in 1913 and the Prix Diémer in 1920. Robert then entered the class of Lucien Capet, who had exceptional influence. Capet had founded a famous quartet that bore his name (Capet Quartet) and in which two of Robert’s uncles played: Henri and Marcel. The Quartet often rehearsed in the Casadesus home, and so it was that Robert was initiated into chamber music. The Beethoven Quartets held no secret for him—he knew them backwards and forwards without ever having played them.

Beginning in 1922, Casadesus collaborated with the composer Maurice Ravel on a project to create piano rolls of a number of his works. Casadesus and Ravel also shared the concert platform in France, Spain and England. Casadesus toured widely as a piano soloist and often performed with his wife, the pianist Gaby (L'Hôte) Casadesus, whom he married in 1921.

From 1935 Casadesus taught at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau. He and his family spent the Second World War years in the United States and had a home in Princeton, New Jersey. He and Gaby established the Fontainebleau School at Newport, Rhode Island after the fall of France. In 1942 the Fontainebleau School was moved to Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. After the war, in 1946, Robert Casadesus, now Director of the American Conservatory oversaw its return to Fontainebleau. His pupils included Claude Helffer, Grant Johannesen, Monique Haas, Mary Louise Boehm and William Eves who appeared in the Bell Telephone Hour documentary and was a longtime piano instructor at Bowdoin College.

Robert and Gaby Casadesus had three children, Jean, Guy and Therese. Casadesus died in Paris, September 19, 1972, after a brief illness and only a few months after the death of his son Jean in an automobile accident. Gaby Casadesus died in Paris on November 12, 1999. In her later years she edited the works of Ravel for G. Schirmer, Inc.