Biography (read more)
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual was a Spanish virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor, born 29 May 1860 in Camprodon and died 18 May 1909 in Cambo-les-Bains, France, of Bright’s disease. A child prodigy who toured widely from a young age, he studied with Felip Pedrell, who inspired him to draw on Spanish folk idiom, and later lived in Paris, where he associated with Debussy, Fauré, and Dukas. His piano suite Iberia (1905–1908), a set of twelve virtuosic ‘impressions’ steeped in Andalusian color, cante jondo, and flamenco-inflected harmony, is considered his masterpiece.
Albéniz never composed for the guitar, but his piano works — especially Asturias (Leyenda), Granada, Sevilla, Córdoba, Cataluña, Mallorca, and Capricho Catalán — were transcribed for guitar by Francisco Tárrega, Miguel Llobet, and later Andrés Segovia, becoming some of the most iconic pieces in the entire classical guitar repertoire. His fusion of Andalusian folk color with sophisticated post-Romantic harmony also influenced Debussy and Ravel and helped define musical Spanish nationalism on the international stage.
Sources:
Repertoire
Asturias (Leyenda)
Granada (from Suite Española, Op. 47)1886
Iberia, Cantos de España, Suite Española, Danza Española— Magda Tagliaferro
Performed by Magda Tagliaferro
