Albéniz’s output as a composer was vast, embracing songs, operas, symphonic rhapsodies, concertos and choral music, but it was through his own instrument, the piano, that he most decisively put the musical heritage of Spain on the international map. Ranging from pleasantly atmospheric salon pieces to blisteringly virtuosic tone poems, his piano works amount to a kind of biography of his native land, drawing on the styles and spirit of every region with incomparable vividness and skill. naxos
Albéniz was a leading figure in the creation of a national style of composition in Spain. This second volume of his piano music combines the early, romantic Recuerdos de viaje, with works composed during the composer’s Parisian period, which ran up to his death in 1909. Whereas in his early works Albéniz borrows tunes from native Spanish folk-lore, almost all of his melodies in the Parisian works are original. Here the writing is bolder and more experimental, marked by tonal ambiguity and new sonorities as in, for example, the dissonant and intricately polyphonic La Vega or the technically difficult and harmonically complex Navarra. Volume 1 of Guillermo González’s recording of the complete Albéniz piano music is available on Naxos 8.554311-12. naxos
The third volume of Albéniz’s piano music presents three contrasting sets of dances, each brimming with the delicacy, joie de vivre and voluptuous beauty that characterise so much of his music. Albéniz is touched by the spirit of Chopin in his delightful Pequeños valses, while the Mazurkas de salón, like those of his predecessor, and the Danzas españolas both transcend mere folkloricism. Volumes 1 (8.554311-12) and 2 (8.570553), also featuring Guillermo González, one of the leading authorities on the composer, have been critically acclaimed. naxos
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