Isaac Albéniz

The piano, an instrument for which Isaac Albéniz showed a talent from an early age, forms the core of a Spanish repertoire that has inspired luminous transcriptions for guitar and orchestra. Born in Camprodon, a few kilometers from the French border, on May 29, 1860, Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual began tapping away at the family piano at an early age, reproducing the military rhythms of the nearby barracks. The child was so precocious that he gave his first public concert in Barcelona at the age of four, astonishing audiences who discovered this prodigy with no family background. Taken in hand by his father, a customs inspector who, like his sister Clementina, favored music over studies, the young pianist was entrusted to the care of Professor Antoine-François Marmontel to sit the entrance exam to the Paris Conservatoire, which he failed, not because of his technical mastery, but because he was too young and dissipated. On his return to Spain, he studied in Madrid and composed a... Marcha militar (1868), but preferred concerts where he showed off his improvisational talents. He travelled to America, playing in bars in Puerto Rico, Cuba and New York, before leaving Spain for Leipzig, where he spent two months studying with Liszt's former pupils. In 1876, a scholarship awarded by Count Guillermo Morphy, private secretary to King Alfonso XII, enabled him to study at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, where three years later he won first prize for piano, despite reservations about his indiscipline, a trait he shared with the young Debussy. While he hoped to meet Liszt in Budapest in August 1880, the latter was in Weimar. Weary, he returned to his homeland to resume touring and, above all, to devote himself to composing zarzuelas, since lost, such as the acclaimed Catalanes de gracia. The turning point in his life came in 1883. In addition to his marriage to a former pupil, Rosina Jordana, his meeting with the eminent composer and musicologist Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922) was decisive. Under his influence, Albéniz not only began to write seriously, but also turned away from a certain Romantic tropism to embrace the richness of Spanish musical culture. Established for a time in Madrid as a teacher and concert performer of the highest calibre, he toured the European capitals and, in between tours, composed extensively for the piano, including waltzes, seven Sonatas, 6 Danzas españolas op. 37 (1886) and a Suite española no. 1 op. 47. For piano and orchestra followed Rapsodia española op. 70 (1886) and Concierto fantástico op. 78 (1887). The Albéniz couple, who had four children including the famous artist Laura Albéniz and footballer Alfonso Albéniz, grandfather of Cecilia María Ciganer-Albéniz, former wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, settled in London for three years. This period saw the birth of the piece España op. 165 and the famous Serenata española op. 181, followed by the masterpiece of the five Chants d'Espagne op. 232, including the Prelude, also known as Asturias (Leyenda). Incorporated into the Suite española, the piece composed for piano became a guitar classic after its transcription by Francisco Tárrega, as did Mallorca op. 202. Known under the fingers of Alicia de Larrocha and Andrés Segovia, Asturias (Leyenda) was also orchestrated by electro musician Thylacine in 2024, with 74 musicians and soloist Thibault Cauvin. It was also in London that the composer was entrusted, by the wealthy Francis Money-Coutts, with the production of the operas The Magic Opel (premiered in 1893), Henry Clifford (1895) and the most successful Pépita Jiménez (1896) (revived at the Opéra-Comique in June 1923). As for Merlin, which was to be the first part of a lyrical trilogy on the legend of King Arthur with Lancelot and Guinevere, it was painstakingly completed in 1902 and only staged a century later, in May 2003! The other two parts remained unfinished. By 1894, Albéniz had taken up residence with his family in Paris, where he frequented his peers Chausson, Fauré, Dukas, d'Indy and Bordes. He briefly taught piano at the Schola Cantorum, and entered a new phase, in an environment marked by the influence of César Franck. Suffering from an inflamed kidney, he moved to Nice and set about composing his ultimate masterpiece, Iberia (1905-1909), a suite of twelve pieces for piano, "twelve new impressions" in his own words, divided into four books, inspired by Andalusia and highly regarded by Debussy, and transcribed for orchestra by Enrique Fernández Arbós and Carlos Surinach, then Francisco Guerrero in 1997. Having achieved his synthesis of styles, Isaac Albéniz moved to Cambo-les-Bains in the Pyrenees, where he died on May 18, 1909, at the age of 48.

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