“Her interpretations are characterised by a particular subtlety, a deep, essential understanding of the score, and a stylistic versatility ranging from baroque to modern. Camats is a deeply responsible performer, reflecting her personality, which is oriented towards high ideals.”
Julius Berger
Mariona Camats is a Catalan cellist who has been connected to the legacy and universe of Pau Casals from her earliest days. She began studying the instrument under the tutelage of Anna Mora and Lluís Claret, Pau Casals’s godson. In 2016, she was awarded the Pau Casals International Scholarship by the Casals Foundation, with a jury chaired by Marta Casals Istomin, and in 2017 she made her debut at the Pablo Casals Festival in Prada de Conflent. For more than ten years she had the privilege of playing a Marc Laberte cello (1921) that had belonged to Maestro Casals. Furthermore, the cello works around Casals is a constant reference point in Mariona Camats’s repertoire, which includes music by contemporaries such as Juli Garreta’s Sonata en Fa, and by Emánuel Moór, whose Suite for Two Cellos she has performed with Manuel Lipstein. By Enric Casals, Camats has performed his Suite for Solo Cello, dedicated to his brother, on several occasions.
Following in Casals’ musical footsteps, in 2024, Mariona Camats took part in the Schubertíada Festival in Vilabertran, performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No. 2 as part of the complete suite cycle, which she shared with some of the most prominent cellists of the current generation, such as Arnau Tomàs, Fernando Arias, and Pau Codina. Oriol Prat, Laia Puig and Guillem Gràcia.
She was invited to perform Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 with the JONC Filharmonia and Manuel Valdivieso in 2014, and with the Bruckner Academieorchester conducted by Jordi Mora in Munich in 2016. She has also collaborated with the Orquestra de Cambra de Granollers conducted by Guy Van Gaas and with the Vallès Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Xavier Puig in performances of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations. In 2021, she performed Joseph Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C major with the Vallès Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrés Salado at the Palau de la Música Catalana, as well as on tour with the Orquestra Camera Musicae, with violinist Joel Bardolet as conductor and leader. More recently, she has performed Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto with the Orquestra Segle XXI conducted by Jordi Mora, both on tour and at the Palau de la Música Catalana.
Mariona Camats has performed in Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and China. She has collaborated with pianists including Gerard Pastor, Eudald Buch, Marc Heredia and Albert Cano Smit, and she currently performs in a duo with Florian Verweij. Her festival appearances have featured the Festival de Torroella, VicCelloFestival, the Emergents Festival at L’Auditori de Barcelona, the Winners and Masters series at the Gasteig in Munich, the Jóvenes Intérpretes series organised by the Fundación Juan March, the Supercello Festival in Beijing, the Festival de Cervià de Ter organised by Ibercamera, and the Petit Palau Cambra series at the Palau de la Música Catalana, among others.
Born in 1997 in La Garriga (Barcelona), Camats completed her studies at the Leopold Mozart Centre of the University of Augsburg (Germany) with Professor Julius Berger, where she was awarded First Prize at the Stein Wettbewerb in 2016. In 2020, she received the Critics’ Prize at El Primer Palau and, in the same year, she was awarded the Fundació Güell scholarship for musical studies. From 2019 to 2021, she was an artist in residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo (Belgium) under the guidance of Gary Hoffman. From 2021 to 2023, she completed the Artist Diploma at the Accademia Stauffer in Cremona (Italy) with Maestro Antonio Meneses. Recently, she has studied Baroque cello with Petr Skalka at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel (Switzerland).
She plays a cello made in 2019 by the Catalan luthier David Bagué.
“The sensitivity and accuracy of her sound moved us and accompanied us throughout the entire journey home, the cello’s resonance lingering in our minds…”
Joan Margarit, poet