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.