By Isaac Albeniz
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Review & Description
The piano music of Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) is well known to guitarists. Indeed, Spanish guitarists contemporary to Albéniz began adapting his piano music for their instrument almost as soon as it was written. Both Francsico Tarrega and Miguel Llobet knew Albéniz personally and the latter guitarist even performed arrangements of Albéniz’s music in shared concerts arranged by the composer himself.
Albeniz’s musical output falls into two broad compositional periods. An early period, at first consisting mainly of short salon pieces and then short pieces in Spanish style, followed by a short period at the very end of his life in which Albéniz produced his monumental Iberia, one of the major items of the late nineteenth-century piano concert repertoire. All of the standard items of the Albéniz “guitar repertoire” come from the first nationalistic period—from c.1846-1894—a period of only eight years. Although the later pieces of this period, items such as Leyenda and Cordoba (from the suite Cantos de EspaZa), are certainly more harmonically and formally interesting than such earlier works as Granada or Sevilla, they provide little hint of the complexity and sophistication that Albéniz would bring to bear in his swansong Iberia. It is a little-known work that provides the transitional link between the two disparate periods: La Vega, the work presented here.
La Vega (1897), subtitled La Alhambra, was originally conceived as a suite for orchestra inspired by poetry of the same name written by Albéniz’s long-time English patron, the banker Money-Coutts (Lord Latymer). However, as was typical of Albéniz, the project was soon abandoned and the sole surviving movement is a piano realization of the first movement La Vega.
The technical and textural complexity of the piece renders any kind of strict transcription for guitar utterly impossible. However, I have been so attracted to this work over the years that I finally decided to make a “concert paraphrase” or fantasia for the guitar. This, in other words, is a very free arrangement of Albéniz’s original made with the aim of capturing the evocative spirit of the music rather than the letter.
SY
The piano music of Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) is well known to guitarists. Indeed, Spanish guitarists contemporary to Albéniz began adapting his piano music for their instrument almost as soon as it was written. Both Francsico Tarrega and Miguel Llobet knew Albéniz personally and the latter guitarist even performed arrangements of Albéniz’s music in shared concerts arranged by the composer himself.
Albeniz’s musical output falls into two broad compositional periods. An early period, at first consisting mainly of short salon pieces and then short pieces in Spanish style, followed by a short period at the very end of his life in which Albéniz produced his monumental Iberia, one of the major items of the late nineteenth-century piano concert repertoire. All of the standard items of the Albéniz “guitar repertoire” come from the first nationalistic period—from c.1846-1894—a period of only eight years. Although the later pieces of this period, items such as Leyenda and Cordoba (from the suite Cantos de EspaZa), are certainly more harmonically and formally interesting than such earlier works as Granada or Sevilla, they provide little hint of the complexity and sophistication that Albéniz would bring to bear in his swansong Iberia. It is a little-known work that provides the transitional link between the two disparate periods: La Vega, the work presented here.
La Vega (1897), subtitled La Alhambra, was originally conceived as a suite for orchestra inspired by poetry of the same name written by Albéniz’s long-time English patron, the banker Money-Coutts (Lord Latymer). However, as was typical of Albéniz, the project was soon abandoned and the sole surviving movement is a piano realization of the first movement La Vega.
The technical and textural complexity of the piece renders any kind of strict transcription for guitar utterly impossible. However, I have been so attracted to this work over the years that I finally decided to make a “concert paraphrase” or fantasia for the guitar. This, in other words, is a very free arrangement of Albéniz’s original made with the aim of capturing the evocative spirit of the music rather than the letter.
SY
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