Isaac
Albéniz (1860–1909) began his musical life as a piano prodigy in
Barcelona at the age of four, and it is as a prolific composer of solo
works for the pianoforte that we celebrate him most. This inexpensive
Dover edition, designed to give you a lifetime of musical enjoyment,
presents two of Albéniz's best-known works in authoritative editions:
the piano suite Iberia, generally considered to be his masterpiece; and España, which contains the "Tango," his most popular individual work.
Iberia
is a collection of twelve musical scenes of Spanish life, principally
Andalusian, written in the years from 1906 to 1909. Its brilliant and
complex character is suffused with the rhythms and harmonies of Spanish
popular music, to which Albéniz turned for inspiration in the last years
of his life.
España,
an earlier work first published in 1890, is made up of six piano pieces
that subtly reflect the influences of the piano literature of the
nineteenth-century salon and — like Iberia
— the harmony and style of impressionism, which Albéniz himself helped
to create. Both works reveal characteristics of the highly
individualized piano technique Albéniz developed from early childhood
and perfected under the tutelage of Liszt.