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ALBENIZ: Iberia (Orch. Peter Breiner)
£6.99
£4.99
(CD)
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Isaac
Albeniz (1860-1909)
Iberia (orchestrated by Peter Breiner)
Isaac Albeniz enjoyed a double career, winning
an international reputation as a virtuoso pianist and doing much to establish
Spanish music in a form acceptable at home and abroad. He was born in 1860 at Camprodon
in the province of Gerona, the son of a customs
official of Basque origin and a mother from Catalonia. He began his study of the piano at the age of
three in Barcelona and apparently appeared at a charity concert the following
year, playing duets with his sister Clementina, seven years his senior and ailegedly
his first teacher. The family moved to Madrid in 1868 and Albeniz was able to study there at
the Escuela Nacional de Musica y Declarnaci6n, the forerunner of the Madrid
Conservatory. Colourful legends, inspired by Albeniz himself, include stories
of how he ran away from home to earn a living as a pianist, playing in a number
of Spanish cities, and how later he stowed away on a ship to America, where he led an
adventurous life as a peripatetic pianist. A]] these tales have been largely
discounted by recent research (Walter A. Clark. Isaac Albeniz: Portrait of a
Romantic, Oxford, 1999, and the same
writer's succinct article in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Band I, Kassel, 1999). Tours in Spain seem to have been
carried out under his father's guidance and his visit to Cuba and Puerto Rico took
place when his father was appointed to a position in Havana. In 1876 he certainly
enrolled in the Leipzig Conservatory, but soon left, perhaps hampered there by
a lack of German. An award from King Alfonso xn allowed him to enter the
Brussels Conservatoire in the autumn of the same year. His studies continued
there until 1879 and fellow-students included the violinist and conductor Enrique
Arbos, one of the first orchestrators of parts of the suite Iberia. Albeniz travelled to Budapest where he might have
expected to meet Liszt, but no such meeting could have taken place and stories
of lessons from Liszt appear to have been false. There followed further
journeys to Cuba and Puerto Rico and a period in Spain when he turned his
attention to the composition and performance of zarzuelas, a popular
Spanish dramatic form in which dialogue is interspersed with music and song.
In 1883 Albeniz moved to Barcelona once more, now taking
lessons from Felipe Pedrell, an influential figure in the creation of a broadly
Spanish school of composition. Any instruction he received seems to have been
informal but set the pattern for much of his future writing. After a return to Madrid and further years of
teaching, composition and performance, success in the concert hall in Paris and London persuaded him to settle
in the latter city. There Henry Lowenfeld, a businessman, offered him a steady
income and financial provision for himself and his family, for his concert
activities, and for further work for the theatre. A later meeting with Francis
Burdett Money-Coutts, a member of the banking family whose interests were more
literary than financial, led to the latter taking over these obligations with
an agreement that brought continued subsidy and a chance to collaborate in
other stage works. The understanding with Money-Coutts, which might have seemed
to some inappropriate, allowed Albeniz to concentrate on composition rather
than performance and did not confine him to London or, indeed, to one writer. In 1893 he moved to Paris, where he studied
orchestration with Paul Dukas and counterpoint with Vincent d'Indy and enjoyed
social contact with leading musicians of their circle.
During the 1890s Albeniz turned his attention to
the theatre again, writing zarzuelas for performance in Spain and completing his
opera Henry Clifford, with a libretto by Money-Coutts, a work that was
successfully staged in Barcelona in 1895 in Italian
translation. This was followed in 1896 by the two-act opera Pepita Jimenez, again
based on a libretto by his patron. His intended trilogy on libretti derived by
Money-Coutts from Malory's Morte d'Arthur was not completed, except for
the first work, Merlin, which was not staged in the composer's lifetime.
He divided the later years of his life, a period of deteriorating health, between Paris, Barcelona and Nice, years which saw the composition of Iberia.
He divided the later years of his life, a period of deteriorating health, between Paris, Barcelona and Nice, years which saw the composition of Iberia.
The
first book of the piano suite Iberia, 12 Nauvelles impressions en quatre
cahiers (Twelve
New Impressions in Four Books) was published in 1905 and dedicated to the widow
of his friend, the composer Ernest Chausson, whose death in 1899 in a bicycle
accident he had found particularly distressing. The first piece, Evacacion, is
gently evocative, identifiably Spanish yet recognisably in the spirit of French
music of the period. Marked Allegretto espressivo, its first theme is
set over a syncopated accompaniment and leads to a secondary theme of clearer
Spanish connotation. El Puerto takes its name from El Puerto de Santa Maria, a fishing-port near Câdiz.
It is represented by a characteristic Spanish dance, with allusions to the technique of the guitar. The first book ends with Fête- Dieu à Seville, generally given in later editions as El Calpus en Sevilla, inspired by the Corpus Christi celebrations in Seville. The procession is heard approaching, with its band and the cries of its penitents, before it passes, leaving the street deserted, to the sound of distant church bells.
It is represented by a characteristic Spanish dance, with allusions to the technique of the guitar. The first book ends with Fête- Dieu à Seville, generally given in later editions as El Calpus en Sevilla, inspired by the Corpus Christi celebrations in Seville. The procession is heard approaching, with its band and the cries of its penitents, before it passes, leaving the street deserted, to the sound of distant church bells.
Albeniz
completed the second book of Iberia in 1896 and dedicated it to the pianist Blanche Selva.
Randena suggests in its title the music of Ronda, a general allusion, it may be supposed, to that region of south-western Spain. Its characteristic alternating rhythms relax into a gentler secondary theme, both elements to return in recapitulation. AlmerÎa, evoking a town on the south-eastern coast of Spain, has a similar typical asymmetry of rhythm, with expressively worked cross-rhythms in its secondary theme. This is followed by Triana, suggesting the gypsy district of Seville and its flamenca traditions.
Randena suggests in its title the music of Ronda, a general allusion, it may be supposed, to that region of south-western Spain. Its characteristic alternating rhythms relax into a gentler secondary theme, both elements to return in recapitulation. AlmerÎa, evoking a town on the south-eastern coast of Spain, has a similar typical asymmetry of rhythm, with expressively worked cross-rhythms in its secondary theme. This is followed by Triana, suggesting the gypsy district of Seville and its flamenca traditions.
The third book was completed towards the end of
1896 and dedicated to Marguerite Hasselmans, although two of the pieces were
originally intended for the Catalan pianist Joaquim Malats, whose performances
particularly pleased the composer. El Albaicin, the gypsy quarter of Oranada,
is depicted in a movement marked Allegro assai, ma melancolico which
brings its own dynamic climax. El Polo, described as a dance and song
from Andalusia, is, in its title at
least, an example of flamenco, here preserving a typical air of
melancholy, suggested in the initial instruction sanglotant (sobbing). Lavapies
is a district of Madrid that takes its name from the ritual washing of the
feet on Maundy Thursday. The piece has something of the habanera about it
in its depiction of street life in a poorer quarter of the city.
lberia ends with three pieces written in 1907 and 1908.
The set was dedicated to Madame Pierre Lalo, daughter-in-law of the composer Edouard Lalo. Malaga inevitably recalls the malaguefia and relaxes into a secondary theme, all to be developed and recapitulated, following the abridged version of sonata form used in So many of these movements. It is followed by Jerez, the last of the pieces to be written, in similar form, with a melancholy first theme, interrupted by suggestions of guitar chords. The last piece, Eritafia takes its name from the Venta Eritafia, an inn in Seville, where flamenco was often heard. It was not originally intended to end the suite, but to come second, to be followed by a projected L'Albufera, depicting Valencia in a jota valenciana. This last was never written and Eritafia took its place, providing a relatively light-hearted ending to a suite which represents a summary and the culmination of the achievement of Albeniz in Spanish music.
The set was dedicated to Madame Pierre Lalo, daughter-in-law of the composer Edouard Lalo. Malaga inevitably recalls the malaguefia and relaxes into a secondary theme, all to be developed and recapitulated, following the abridged version of sonata form used in So many of these movements. It is followed by Jerez, the last of the pieces to be written, in similar form, with a melancholy first theme, interrupted by suggestions of guitar chords. The last piece, Eritafia takes its name from the Venta Eritafia, an inn in Seville, where flamenco was often heard. It was not originally intended to end the suite, but to come second, to be followed by a projected L'Albufera, depicting Valencia in a jota valenciana. This last was never written and Eritafia took its place, providing a relatively light-hearted ending to a suite which represents a summary and the culmination of the achievement of Albeniz in Spanish music.
It should be added that lberia cries out
for orchestration. Nine of the pieces were orchestrated by Arb6s and enjoyed success
in the concert hall in this form. The gifted Slovak-born Peter Breiner now
offers a colourful orchestrated version of the whole work.
Keith Anderson
Disc 1
- Book I: Evocacion - 05:46
- Book I: El Puerto - 04:34
- Book I: El Corpus en Sevilla - 07:57
- Book II: Rondena - 06:06
- Book II: Almeria - 09:38
- Book II: Triana - 04:07
- Book III: El Albaicin - 07:23
- Book III: El Polo - 05:59
- Book III: Lavapies - 06:20
- Book IV: Malaga - 05:08
- Book IV: Jerez - 09:09
- BooK IV: Eritana - 04:36
Iberia (orch. Peter Breiner) (more info)
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Composer(s)/ Author(s):
Albeniz, Isaac
Conductor(s):
Golovschin, Igor
Orchestra(s):
Moscow Symphony Orchestra
Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099402323
Item Number: 8553023
Release Date: Jan 1, 2001
Albeniz, Isaac
Conductor(s):
Golovschin, Igor
Orchestra(s):
Moscow Symphony Orchestra
Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099402323
Item Number: 8553023
Release Date: Jan 1, 2001
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