Večernji program - Dubrovačke ljetne igre

64. dubrovačke ljetne igre
64 dubrovnik summer festival
2013
hrvatska croatia
th
VIP PROGRAM
LES HUMORESQUES
ELENA BASHKIROVA
glasovir · piano
atrij kneževa dvora
rector’s palace atrium
8. kolovoza · 8th august
21.30 · 9.30 pm
FRANZ LISZT
Legenda br. 1, Die Vogelpredigt des heiligen Franz von Assisi
Kako je sv. Franjo Asiški propovijedao pticama
St. Francis preaches to the birds
iz Dvije legende, S.175 from 2 Légendes, S.175
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Humoreske Humoresques
***
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Leptiri, op. 2 Papillons, Op. 2
ISAAC ALBÉNIZ
Pet Španjolskih pjesama, op. 232
Five Cantos de España, Op. 232 No. 1-5
1. Preludé
2. Orientale
3. Sous le palmier
4. Córdoba
5. Seguidillas
Elena Bashkirova rođena je u Moskvi,
gdje studira na Konzervatoriju P. I.
Čajkovski u majstorskoj klasi svog oca
Dimitrija Bashkirova, poznatog
pijanista i glazbenog pedagoga.
Svoj repertoar, koji obuhvaća djela iz
razdoblja klasike i romantizma te glazbu
20. stoljeća, redovito izvodi uz čuvene
orkestre kao što su Hamburgška
državna filharmonija, orkestar
Gürzenich iz Kölna, Njemački
simfonijski orkestar, Konzerthaus
orkestar iz Berlina, Orchestre de Paris,
salzburški Mozarteum orkestar,
Španjolski nacionalni orkestar, Orkestar
fondacije Glubenkian i Chicaški
simfonijski orkestar. Među brojnim
dirigentima s kojima je do sada
nastupala su Sergiu Celibidache, Pierre
Boulez, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos,
Semyon Bychkov, Michael Gielen,
Christoph Eschenbach, Ivor Bolton te
Christoph von Dohnányi. Redovito
gostuje na velikim međunarodnim
festivalima poput onih u Ruhru i
Verbieru.
Posebnu pozornost Bashkirova poklanja
komornoj glazbi, te uz pomoć drugih
komornih glazbenika nastupa na
najznačajnijim svjetskim festivalima i
izdaje velik broj nosača zvuka. Pratila je
na glasoviru ugledne pjevače među
kojima su Anna Netrebko i Robert Holl.
Godine 1998. osniva Međunarodni
festival komorne glazbe u Jeruzalemu,
na kojem u ulozi umjetničke
ravnateljice svake godine predstavlja
renomirane inozemne umjetnike. Od
samog osnutka ovaj je festival značajan
čimbenik u kulturnom životu Izraela i
pravi Panteon vrhunske komorne
glazbe, koja prelazi granice zemlje i
zauzima značajno mjesto na glazbenoj
mapi svijeta. U travnju 2012. godine u
Njemačkoj se osniva festival koji postaje
glazbenim partnerom Jeruzalemskog
festivala komorne glazbe sa sjedištem u
Berlinskom židovskom muzeju i koji
ubrzo stječe veliku popularnost publike.
Projekti Jeruzalemskog festivala
komorne glazbe gostovali su u Berlinu,
Parizu, Londonu, Salzburgu, Beču,
Lisabonu, Budimpešti, New Yorku i
Chicagu, te na uglednim međunarodnim
ljetnim festivalima među kojima su oni
u Luzernu, Rheingau, Bad Kissingenu i
Stresi, festival George Enescu u
Bukureštu, Beethovenfest u Bonnu te
Schleswig-Holstein festival.
Crvenu nit večerašnjeg koncerta
predstavlja jedan od najpopularnijih
žanrova romantičarskih skladatelja. To
su klavirske minijature sa programskim
sadržajem, pogotovo tzv. humoreske, tj.
kratke skladbe koje u sebi sadrže
odmjeren humor koji više od samog
smijeha djeluje na raspoloženje. U
programu su stoga uvrštena tri
skladatelja koja su stvarala upravo takva
djela.
Franz Liszt (1811. – 1886.) bio je
kompleksan čovjek. S jedne je strane
bio članom glazbene i društvene
avantgarde svog vremena i nije davao
važnost činjenici da živi sa ženom i ima
djecu van braka, dok je istovremeno bio
vrlo religiozan i tradicionalan katolik.
Neobično je kako je Liszt uspio pomiriti
svoje ponašanje sa strogim religioznim
načelima. No, redovnička strana Liszta
uvijek je postojala. Rano u svom životu
razmišljao je o tome da postane
svećenik, što je kasnije odbacio u korist
života putujućeg klavirskog virtuoza.
Sva putovanja, lutanja, opijanja i druge
aktivnosti vezane uz takav život postale
su previše za Liszta, koji se oprostio od
koncerata 1847., u 36. godini života. Do
tada je već ostavio majku svoje troje
djece, kontesu Marie d’Agoult zbog
druge plemkinje, princeze Carolyne zu
Sayn-Wittgenstein, žene ruskog princa.
Iako su oboje željeli brak, princezin
muž (da ne spominjemo samog Papu)
joj nije htio dati razvod. Par se nikada
nije vjenčao, te nisu više živjeli zajedno
nakon 1863. kada se Liszt preselio u
maleni stan blizu Rima, no ostao je
vezan za nju sve do njezine smrti. Smrti
Lisztovog sina 1859. i njegove najmlađe
kćeri 1862. imale su snažan utjecaj na
Liszta. Obznanio je svojim prijateljima
da će od tada živjeti samačkim životom.
Primao je samo manje narudžbe i bio
poznat kao Abbé Liszt. Od tada je
provodio svoje vrijeme između Rima,
Budimpešte i Weimera te skladao,
podučavao i sudjelovao na glazbenim
festivalima.
Liszt je bio gotovo isključivo
zainteresiran za religiozne teme tijekom
godina provedenih u Rimu (1861. – 1864.),
a Dvije legende, skladane između 1863. i
1865. i objavljene 1866., nalaze se među
njegovim najboljim djelima iz tog
perioda. Nije dakle iznenađujuće da je
tijekom života u Rimu Liszt usmjerio
svoju pažnju prema dvama svecima
Rimske katoličke crkve, sv. Franji
Asiškom, koji je propovijedao pticama, i
sv. François de Pauleu, koji je poput
Isusa hodao na vodi. Ove dvije šarolike
priče su se jako dopale Lisztu, te je sa
svojim Dvjema legendama stvorio
vrhunske primjere programske glazbe.
U Legendi br. 1 klavir zvuči kao
imitacija ptičjeg pjeva sa nizovima
trilera i tremola sve dok im Sv. Franjo
ne započne propovijedati, a ptice u
stablima utišaju svoj pjev i slušaju ga,
dok se ptice na tlu šeću do sveca i
okružuju ga kako bi slušale. Prema
legendi, sv. Franjo je propovijedao
pticama o tome kako na mnogočemu
moraju biti zahvalne Bogu i pjevati mu
hvale svaki dan. Glazbeno je ova
skladba jedno od najvećih Lisztovih
djela. Potpuno su nestali Lisztovi
tehnički vatrometi i briljantne pasaže.
Umjesto njih, Liszt koristi tehniku u
službi glazbene ideje, koja se realizira
kao nježna, spiritualna glazbena
pripovijetka.
Leptiri, op. 2 (skladani 1831.) jedna je
od najranijih skladbi Roberta
Schumanna (1810. – 1856.), i sastoji se
od dvanaest kratkih dijelova. Leptiri iz
naslova mogu nagovijestiti
romantičarski hir. Uistinu, način na koji
dijelovi skladbe ekscentrično lepršaju
od jednog prema drugom,
tradicionalno je bio smatran kao dokaz
tome. Međutim, postoji dublje značenje
o kojem Schumann piše u jednom od
svojih pisama. Govori o „mostu do
Leptira: jer možemo lagano zamisliti
dušu koja lebdi nad tijelom pretvorenim
u prašinu. O ovome bih vas mogao
mnogo naučiti, da Jean Paul to već nije
ranije bolje objasnio.“ Njemački
romantičar Jean Paul (1763 – 1825) bio
je autor kojega je Schumann idolizirao,
a Leptiri su bili direktno inspirirani
njegovim romanom Flegeljahre (1804,
1805), pogotovo zadnjom scenom koja
se događa za vrijeme bala pod
maskama. Različiti plesovi dakle
prikazuju sam bal, ali i različite osjećaje
koje izaziva u glavnim likovima (dvojici
braće Waltu i Vultu, i njihovom
ljubavnom interesu, Wini) kroz različite
scenarije zbunjenosti i obmane. Walt je
poetički sentimentalist, romantičarski
tip, dok je Vult energični realist.
Namjera odgovarajućih glazbenih
odlomaka je prikazati različite
osobnosti i kulturne osobine putem
zvuka i strukture. Dihotomije između
sanjara i realista također reflektiraju
romantičarsku fascinaciju Doppelgänger
fenomenom, konfliktom osobnosti
alter-ega, i često je bilo rečeno da Walt i
Vult predstavljaju suprotstavljene
aspekte Schumannove vlastite ličnosti.
Ideja psihološke promjene,
metamorfoze kroz koju leptir prolazi, je
također nagoviještena u glazbenoj
transformaciji prisutnoj u ovom djelu.
U pismu prijatelju, kritičaru Ludwigu
Rellstabu, Schumann na sljedeći način
opisuje program ovog djela: „Osjećam
da je potrebno kazati nešto o izvoru
Leptira, zbog toga što je nit koja ih
povezuje jedva vidljiva. Prisjetit ćeš se
završne scene Jean Paulovog Flegeljahra:
raskošni ples pod maskama – Walt –
Vult – maske – Wina – Vultov ples –
izmjena maski – priznanja – bijes –
otkrića – žurba – završna scena, potom
odlazeći brat. Uvijek iznova okretao sam
zadnju stranicu, jer kraj mi se činio kao
novi početak. . . . Gotovo bez da sam to
znao, našao sam se za klavirom, i jedan
po jedan, Leptiri su počeli nastajati.“
(Schumann, Pismo Ludwigu Rellstabu,
1831)
Humoreske su drugo i zadnje
Scuhamannovo djelo inspirirano
romanima Jean Paula (njegovo pravo
ime bilo je ustvari Johann Paul
Friedrich Richter). Kao što smo
spomenuli, minijature iz Leptira nastale
su po prizoru bala iz Richterovog
romana, dok su Humoreske bazirane na
općenitom raspoloženju u svim
Richterovim romanima, raspoloženju
koje možemo nazvati sentimentalnom
ironijom. ‘Humor’ ovdje nije iz šala, već
je ‘dobronamjeran’ način gledanja na
sve uz sarkastični odmak i blagu
začuđenost. „Cijeli tjedan sam sjedio uz
klavir i skladao i pisao, smijao se i
plakao, sve u isto vrijeme,“ napisao je
Schumann svojoj voljenoj Clari Wieck u
ožujku 1839. „To ćeš najljepše vidjeti
prikazano u mom opusu 20, velikim
Humoreskama.“
Schumannu je u ovom trenutku života
trebalo sretno skretanje pažnje: bio je
vrlo nesretan zbog odvojenosti od
Clare, no ona nije mogla prihvatiti
Robertovu molbu da mu se priključi u
Beču. Od svih Schumannovih klavirskih
djela, Humoreske je možda najteže
bezuvjetno voljeti. Ovo dugačko djelo je
epizodično na takav način da ne pruža
centriranost na likove. Ljupka
jednostavnost uvodnog dijela (koji se
ponavlja samo jednom, nakon
razigrano briljantnih sljedećih stranica)
postavlja atmosferu koja se ponavlja u
razmacima. Kroz cijelo djelo
pronalazimo snažno privlačne
elemente: tipični Schumannov ritmički
zanos, harmoničku ingenioznost i
nježnu poetičnost. Izgleda da je glavna
tema na početku završnog dijela bila
iznimno privlačna samom Schumannu,
koji se desetak godina kasnije
prisjetio kada je skladao popratnu
glazbu za Byronov Manfred. U
Humoreskama je, prema Schumannu,
implicirano je mnogo više hirovitosti
(što je jedno od značenja riječi
humoreska), nego prave razigranosti.
Da bi se cijenio ovaj rad, potrebno je
osloniti se na skladateljevo objašnjenje
humora kao „načina gledanja na
emocije uz ironični odmak.“ Otuda
ironija glazbe koja neprestano mijenja
gledište, koja slavi nametanje promjena
raspoloženja koje naizgled često
napadaju emocionalnu nit. Ovo je djelo
velikih razmjera bez svjesnog
formalizma, glazbene misli koje teku
bez ograničenja: „smijeh i plakanje“.
Skladatelj i pijanist Isaac Albéniz (1860.
– 1909.) rano je bio prozvanim
„španjolskim Lisztom“, prije svega zbog
svog improvizatorskog dara i
virtuoznosti na klaviru i romantičnom
zaigranošću glazbe koju je pisao. Prvi
javni koncertni nastup imao je sa svega
četiri godine, dok je u dobi od sedam
godina položio prijemni ispit na
slavnom Pariškom glazbenom
konzervatoriju, gdje ga ipak radi
njegove dobi nisu primili. Kasnije je
preputovao i stari i novi kontinent te
održao bezbroj koncerata. U svojoj
prvoj fazi skladanja, Albénizu su kao
uzori poslužili J. S. Bach, Chopin,
Beethoven i Liszt, pa je stoga i glazba
zvučala slično glazbi spomenutih
skladatelja. Tek nakon 1883., kada je
upoznao skladatelja i pedagoga Felipa
Pedrella (1841. – 1922.), Albéniz je
počeo graditi svoj individualni stil pod
utjecajem folklorne glazbe svoje
domovine, Španjolske. Do 1886.
Albéniz je skladao preko 50 klavirskih
skladbi. Kasnije su nastala djela za
orkestar, za glas i klavir, za glazbenu
pozornicu, no Albéniz je do danas ostao
najzapamćeniji po ciklusima kratkih
klavirskih kompozicija i klavirskim
suitama poput Suite española, op. 47,
Suite española, op. 97 (1889), Iberia
(1905, 1909), Doce piezas características
(1888), España, op. 165 (1890) te Chants
d’Espagne, op.233 (1892, 1898).
Albénizov biograf, muzikolog i
stručnjak za španjolsku klasičnu glazbu
Walter Aaron Clark sljedećim je
riječima opisao Španjolske pjesme:
„U svojoj ozbiljnosti, harmoničkom
bogatstvu i formalnoj raznolikosti, ova
suita predstavlja najveći napredak u
Albénizovom španjolskom stilu.“ Prvi
stavak skladan je u maniri čistog
andaluzijskog flamenka, drugi je
melankoličan andaluzijski ples, u
trećem se miješa blago njihanje
palminih grana sa ritmovima tanga, u
četvrtom se čuju crkveni zvuci
inspirirani Velikom džamijom u
Córdobi, dok je zadnji, peti stavak,
skladan u formi popularne brze
španjolske seguidille.
Jelena Grazio
Pianist Elena Bashkirova (1958) was
born in Moscow and studied at the
Tchaikovsky Conservatory in her
father’s (Dimitrij Bashkirov) master
class, who himself was a famous pianist
and music teacher.
Elena Bashkirova handles the Classical
and Romantic repertoire as well as the
music of the 20th century and regularly
performs with famous orchestras such
as the Hamburg Philharmonic State
Orchestra, the NDR Symphony
Orchestra Hamburg, the GürzenichOrchester Köln, the Deutsche Sinfonie
Orchester and Konzerthausorchester
Berlin, the Orchestre de Paris, the
Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the
Spanish National Orchestra, the
Glubenkian Foundation Orchestra and
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Among the conductors she has
performed with Sergiu Celibidache,
Pierre Boulez, Rafael Frühbeck de
Burgos, Semyon Bychkov, Michael
Gielen, Christoph Eschenbach, Ivor
Bolton and Christoph von Dohnányi.
Additionally, Elena Bashkirova is a
regular and welcomed guest at
international festivals such as the
Klavier Festival Ruhr and the Verbier
Festival.
Chamber music has always been a
particular point of focus in her work.
Elena Bashkirova and her chamber
music partners have performed in
concert at many of the worlds
important festivals and have recorded
numerous discs. Elena Bashkirova
works as accompanist with singers like
Anna Netrebko and Robert Holl among
others.
In 1998, Elena Bashkirova founded the
International Jerusalem Chamber
Music Festival. In her position as
Artistic Director she creates an annual
chamber music event featuring
international artists. Since its
foundation over 10 years ago, the
festival has become an important part
of Israel’s cultural life. Moreover the
Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival’s
appearances are among the pantheon of
highly regarded chamber music
performances, thrusting it beyond
Israel’s borders and onto the world’s
musical map. In April 2012, a German
partner festival was founded, located at
the Jewish Museum Berlin and was
highly esteemed by its audience. The
Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival’s
guest performances include
appearances in Berlin, Paris, London,
Salzburg, Vienna, Lisbon, Budapest,
New York and Chicago, as well as at
internationally renowned summer
festivals such as the Luzern Festival, the
Rheingau Musik Festival, the Kissinger
Sommer, the Stresa Festival, the George
Enescu Festival in Bucharest, the
Beethovenfest Bonn and the SchleswigHolstein Musik Festival.
The leitmotif of tonight’s concert is one
of the genres most popular with
Romantic-era composers:
programmatic piano miniatures,
especially humoresques, generally short
piano compositions expressing a mood
or a vague nonmusical idea, usually
more good-humored than humorous.
Tonight’s programme features pieces
written by three composers who wrote
precisely this kind of music.
Franz Liszt (1811–1886) was a complex
personality. On the one hand he
belonged to the music and social avantgarde of his time and he did not
attribute any importance to the fact that
he was living with a woman with whom
he has children, but they were not
married. On the other hand, he was a
very religious traditional Catholic. The
way Liszt managed to bring his
behaviour and his strict religious
principles is highly unusual. But there
was always a strongly religious side to
Liszt. He considered becoming a priest
from an early age, but he later
renounced that idea in favour of living a
life of a travelling piano virtuoso. All
the trips, wanderings, drunken nights
and other activities which go hand in
hand with this kind of lifestyle became
overwhelming for Liszt, who stopped
playing in concerts at the age of 36, in
1847. By then he had already left the
mother of his three children, countess
Marie d’Agoult for another
noblewoman, princess Carolyne zu
Sayn-Wittgenstein, the wife of a Russian
prince. Even thought they both wanted
to get married, the princess’ husband
(let alone the Pope himself) did not
want to grant her a divorce. The couple
never got married and they no longer
lived together after 1863, when Liszt
moved to a small apartment near Rome.
However, he remained attached to her
until the end of his days. The deaths of
his son (1859) and his youngest
daughter (1862) had a strong influence
on Liszt. He announced to his friends
that he would lead a solitary life. He
accepted only smaller commissions and
was known as Abbé Liszt. He spent his
time in Rome, Budapest and Weimar;
he composed, taught music and
participated in music festivals.
Liszt was almost exclusively interested
in religious works during the years he
spent in Rome (1861-1864) and Two
Legends, composed between 1863 and
1865 and published in 1866 are among
the best pieces from that period. So it is
not surprising that during his days in
Rome, Liszt focussed all his attention
towards two Catholic saints: St. Francis,
who preached to the birds, and St.
François de Paule, who walked on
water, just like Jesus. Liszt found these
two picturesque stories so interesting
that he turned them into outstanding
examples of programme music, Two
Legends.
In Legend No. 1 the piano sounds like
an imitation of birds’ song, with series
of thrillers and tremolos until St.
Francis starts preaching to them. Then
the birds in the trees quiet their song
and listen to him and the birds on the
ground walk up to the saint and
surround him so that they could listen
to him. According to the legend, St.
Francis preached to the birds that they
have a lot to be thankful for to God and
that they should sing songs of praise for
him every day. From a musical
perspective, this composition is one of
the greatest pieces by Liszt. There are
none of his technical fireworks and
brilliant passages.
Instead, Liszt puts the technique in the
service of an idea, which is then
realized as a gentle, spiritual music
story.
Papillons, Op. 2 (1831) is one of Robert
Schumann’s earliest works and it
consists of twelve short pieces. The
‘papillons’ (butterflies) of the title might
suggest nineteenth-century Romantic
whimsy — indeed, the way the pieces
seem to eccentrically ‘flutter’ from one
to another has traditionally been seen
as evidence of this. However, there is a
deeper significance, for Schumann
wrote in a letter of “a bridge to the
Papillons: because we can readily
imagine the psyche floating above the
body turned to dust. You could learn a
good deal from me about this, if Jean
Paul had not explained it better.” Jean
Paul was an author idolised by
Schumann, and Papillons was directly
inspired by his novel Flegeljahre, in
particular the last scene, a masked ball.
The various dances therefore depict
both the ball and the changing
emotions it triggers in the main
characters — the two brothers Walt and
Vult, and the object of their love, Wina
— through various scenarios of
confusion and deception. Walt is a
poetic sentimentalist, whereas Vult is an
energetic realist. The goal of music
passages is to show different characters
and cultural features through music and
structure. The dichotomies between the
dreamer and the realist also reflect the
Romanticist fascination by the
Doppelgänger phenomenon, the conflict
of the alter-ego personality and it has
often been said that Walt and Vult
represent two opposing aspects of
Schumann’s own personality. The idea
of psychological change and the
butterfly’s metamorphosis is also
present in the musical transformation
in this piece.
In a letter to his friend, the critic
Ludwig Rellstab, Schumann describes
the “program” as follows: “I feel I must
add a few words about the origin of the
Papillons, for the thread that is meant to
bind them together is scarcely visible.
You will remember the final scene of
Jean Paul’s Flegeljahre: fancy dress ball
– Walt – Vult – masks – Vina – Vult’s
dancing – exchange of masks –
confessions – rage – revelations – hurry
away – concluding scene, then the
departing brother. Again and again I
turned over the last page, for the end
seemed to me but a new beginning. . . .
Almost without knowing, I found
myself sitting at the piano, and one
Papillon after another came into being.”
(Schumann, Letter to Ludwig Rellstab,
1831)
Humoresques are the second and last
Schumann’s piece inspired by Jean
Paul’s novels (whose real name was
Johann Paul Friedrich Richter). As it
has already been mentioned, the
Papillon miniatures were based on a
masked ball scene from a novel by
Richter, whereas the Humoresques were
based on the general mood found in all
Richter’s novels, a mood which we
might call sentimental irony. ‘Humour’
here does not stand for ‘joke’, it is rather
a well-intentioned outlook with a
sarcastic twist and gentle suprise.
‘I spent the whole week sitting by the
piano, composing and writing, laughing
and crying, all at the same time,’
Schumann wrote to his beloved Clara
Wiech in March 1839. ‘The best way to
see this is to listen to my Humoresques,
Op. 20.’
At this moment of his life, Schumann
needed something to divert his attention:
he was very unlucky because from his
separation from Clara, but she couldn’t
accept his invitation to join him in
Vienna. Out of all Schumann’s piano
pieces, Humoresques are perhaps the
most difficult to love unconditionally.
This long piece is episodic in the sense
that it doesnt’ allow for centeredness on
the characters. The lovely simplicity of
the introductory part (which is repeated
only once, after several playfully brilliant
pages) sets the atmosphere which is
repeated in intervals. Throughout the
piece we find strong attractive elements:
Schumman’s rhytmic exaltations,
harmonic ingeniousness and gentle
poeticness. It seems that Schuman found
the main theme very attractive since he
remembered it some ten years later,
when he was composing the
accompanying music for Byron’s
Manfred. In the Humoresques, according
to Schumann, there is an implication of
much more capriciousness (which is one
of the meanings of the word
‘humoresque’), than there is of true
playfulness. In order to fully appreciate
this piece, it is necessary to rely on the
author’s definition of humour as ‘a way
of looking at emotions with an ironic
twist’. This is the source of the irony in
the music which keeps changing its point
of view, which celebrates mood swings
often attacking the emotional part. This
is a great piece without intentional
formalism; it is a piece with musical
thoughts which flow freely, without
limitations - ‘laughter and tears’.
Composer and pianist Isaac Albéniz
(1860 – 1909) was named ‘Spanish Liszt’,
mostly because of his talent for
improvisation and his virtuosity on the
piano as well as the romantic character
of the music he composed. He had his
first public concert performance at the
early age of four and at the age of seven
he passed the entrance exam at the
famous Paris Conservatory, where he
was not admitted after all because of his
very young age. He later travelled all over
Europe and America and held numerous
concerts. During the first period od his
composing career Albéniz’s role models
were Bach, Chopin, Beethoven and Liszt
so his music sounded similar to theirs. It
was only after 1833, when he met the
composer and professor Felipe Pedrello
(1841 – 1922) that Albéniz started
building his individual style, influenced
by the folklore of his country, Spain. By
1886 Albéniz had composed more than
50 pieces for the piano. He later
composed pieces for the orchestra, for
one voice and the orchestra and for the
music stage, but Albéniz is most famous
for his cycles of short pieces for the
piano and piano suites such as the Suite
española, Op. 47, Suite española, Op. 97
(1889), Iberia (1905, 1909), Doce piezas
características (1888), España, Op. 165
(1890) and Cantos de Espana, Op.233
(1892, 1898). This is how musicologist,
expert on Spanish classical music and
Albéniz’s biographer Walter Aron Clark
described Cantos de Espana: “The suite
represents the furthest advance in
Albéniz’s Spanish style to date in its
seriousness, harmonic richness, and
formal variety“
The first movement is composed as pure
Andalusian flamenco; the second one is
a melancholy Andalusian dance; the
third one represents the mixture of
gentle breeze in the palm trees and the
rhythm of tango; the fourth movement
features sounds inspired by the Cordoba
Mosque; whereas the fifth movement is
composed in the form of the popular
and quick Spanish seguidilla.
Jelena Grazio