Putting these posts together kept me sane during the first lockdown. This morning I started to feel that a few more might do the same now so when a random play music session came up with a beautiful piano suite by Granados this inspired me to go all Spanish.

Enrique Granados.

Enrique Granados, (born July 27, 1867, Lérida, Spain—died March 24, 1916, at sea), was a pianist and composer, a leader of the movement toward nationalism in late 19th-century Spanish music.

Granados made his debut as a pianist at 16. He studied composition in Barcelona with Felipe Pedrell, the father of Spanish nationalism in music. He also studied piano in Paris in 1887. Returning to Barcelona in 1889, he established himself as a pianist of the front rank, and his 12 Danzas españolas achieved great popularity. The first of his seven operas, María del Carmen, was produced in 1898 and in 1900 Granados founded a short-lived classical-concerts society and his own piano school, which produced a number of distinguished players. His interest in the 18th century is reflected in his tonadillas, songs written “in the ancient style.” He wrote extensively and fluently for the piano, in a somewhat diffuse, Romantic style and in fact his masterpieces, the Goyescas (1911–13), are reflections on Francisco de Goya’s paintings and tapestries. These six piano movements were adapted into an opera that received its premiere in New York City in 1916. While returning home from this performance, Granados drowned when his ship, the Sussex, was torpedoed by a German submarine.

The Goyescas are truly exceptional pieces. Written in the first decade of the twentieth century, the suite is, as mentioned above, a musical tribute to the great Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, under whose spell Granados had fallen as a young man. Filled with a patriotic fervour for what he saw as a universally great Spanish genius, he wrote several pieces inspired by the painter’s life and times. The six pieces that make up The Goyescas are no mere tone-poems but instead draw on details from Goya’s works—notably the Caprichos, a sequence of aquatints that satirised (and outraged) Spanish society. They draw on Spanish folk music too, as in the famous dialogue between the Maiden and the Nightingale, complete with a trilling cadenza at the end for the nightingale. Another product of Granados’s preoccupation with the painter was the exuberant El pelele, which recounts the tale of a straw man being tossed on a trampoline.

The pianist is the fabulous Spanish musician Alicia De Larrocha.

Granados – The Goyescas

1. Los requiebros 0:00

2. Coloquio en la reja 8:44

3. El Fandango del Candil 20:04

4. Quejas ó la maja y el ruiseñor 25:38

5. El amor y la muerte (Balada) 32:20

6. Epilogo (Serenata del espectro) 44:40

7. El pelele (Escena goyesca) 52:25

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Isaac Albéniz.

Isaac Albéniz, (born May 29, 1860, Camprodón, Spain—died May 18, 1909, Cambo-les-Bains, France), was a composer and virtuoso pianist notable as a leader of the Spanish nationalist school of musicians.

Albéniz appeared as a piano prodigy at age 4 and by 12 had run away from home twice. Both times he supported himself by concert tours, eventually gaining his father’s consent to his wanderings. He studied at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1875–76 and, when his money ran out, obtained a scholarship to study in Brussels. From 1883 he taught in Barcelona and Madrid. He had previously composed facile salon music for piano, but about 1890 he began to take composition seriously. He studied with Felipe Pedrell, father of the nationalist movement in Spanish music, and in 1893 moved to Paris. There he came under the influence of Vincent d’Indy, Paul Dukas, and other French composers and for a time taught piano at the Schola Cantorum. He later developed Bright’s disease and was a near invalid for several years before he died.

Albéniz’ fame rests chiefly on his piano pieces, which utilise the melodic styles, rhythms, and harmonies of Spanish folk music. The most notable work is Iberia (1905–09), a collection of 12 virtuoso piano pieces, considered by many to be a profound evocation of the spirit of Spain, particularly of Andalusia. Also among his best works are the Suite española, containing the popular “Sevillana”; the Cantos de España, which includes “Córdoba”; Navarra; and the Tango in D Major. Orchestrated versions of many of his pieces are also frequently played.

Here is Alicia De Larrocha, again, playing the 12 pieces that make up Iberia in a sound recording by BBC Radio 3 of a concert at The RFH in 1980.

Albéniz – Iberia + Navarra

Book I

Evocación 0:07

El Puerto 5:42

Fête-dieu à Seville 9:55

Book II

Rondeña 19:11

Almería 26:30

Triana 36:13

Book III

El Albaicín 41:37

El Polo 48:52

Lavapiés 55:57

Book IV

Málaga 1:02:57

Jerez 1:07:50

Eritaña 1:17:13

Encore:

Navarra 1:22:53