Release Date: 12 January 2000
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 730099402323
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: ALBENIZ
Description
IsaacAlbeniz (1860-1909) Iberia (orchestrated by Peter Breiner) Isaac Albeniz enjoyed a double career, winningan international reputation as a virtuoso pianist and doing much to establishSpanish music in a form acceptable at home and abroad. He was born in 1860 at Camprodonin the province of Gerona, the son of a customsofficial of Basque origin and a mother from Catalonia. He began his study of the piano at the age ofthree in Barcelona and apparently appeared at a charity concert the followingyear, playing duets with his sister Clementina, seven years his senior and ailegedlyhis first teacher. The family moved to Madrid in 1868 and Albeniz was able to study there atthe Escuela Nacional de Musica y Declarnaci6n, the forerunner of the MadridConservatory. Colourful legends, inspired by Albeniz himself, include storiesof how he ran away from home to earn a living as a pianist, playing in a numberof Spanish cities, and how later he stowed away on a ship to America, where he led anadventurous life as a peripatetic pianist. A]] these tales have been largelydiscounted by recent research (Walter A. Clark. Isaac Albeniz: Portrait of aRomantic, Oxford, 1999, and the samewriter's succinct article in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Band I, Kassel, 1999). Tours in Spain seem to have beencarried out under his father's guidance and his visit to Cuba and Puerto Rico tookplace when his father was appointed to a position in Havana. In 1876 he certainlyenrolled in the Leipzig Conservatory, but soon left, perhaps hampered there bya lack of German. An award from King Alfonso xn allowed him to enter theBrussels Conservatoire in the autumn of the same year. His studies continuedthere until 1879 and fellow-students included the violinist and conductor EnriqueArbos, one of the first orchestrators of parts of the suite Iberia. Albeniz travelled to Budapest where he might haveexpected to meet Liszt, but no such meeting could have taken place and storiesof lessons from Liszt appear to have been false. There followed furtherjourneys to Cuba and Puerto Rico and a period in Spain when he turned hisattention to the composition and performance of zarzuelas, a popularSpanish dramatic form in which dialogue is interspersed with music and song. In 1883 Albeniz moved to Barcelona once more, now takinglessons from Felipe Pedrell, an influential figure in the creation of a broadlySpanish school of composition. Any instruction he received seems to have beeninformal but set the pattern for much of his future writing. After a return to Madrid and further years ofteaching, composition and performance, success in the concert hall in Paris and London persuaded him to settlein the latter city. There Henry Lowenfeld, a businessman, offered him a steadyincome and financial provision for himself and his family, for his concertactivities, and for further work for the theatre. A later meeting with FrancisBurdett Money-Coutts, a member of the banking family whose interests were m
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Zenz:Cathariou:Iacovidou
Zahir Ensemble
Yun-Yi Qin
