ANGEL STEREO 3 562 8

SPANISH PIANO MUSIC JOSE ITURBI

T~V

STEREO S 35628

JOSE ITURBI

SPANISH PIANO MUSIC PIECES BY ALBENIZ AND GRANADOS

Iturbi s performances here become more impressive the more one listens to them: the sheer bite of the rhythm, the clarity of the finger-work, the vitality, the absence of exaggerations or gimmicks, add up to first-rate readings.. .The stereo recording is as¬ tonishingly lifelike...

& v ’ THE GRAMOPHONE

Born in Valencia, Jose Iturbi studied in his native city and in Barcelona with Maria Jordan, Jose Bellver and Joaquin Malats, the latter a friend of both Albeniz (who wrote Iberia for Malats) and Granados. He won a first prize at the Valencia Con¬ servatory while still a boy, and later attended the Paris Conservatory, graduating at seventeen with “premier nomme” honors. After four years as head of the piano faculty of the Geneva Conservatory he embarked on the life of a virtuoso and soon won a reputation as an artist of the first rank throughout Europe, Africa and Latin America.

The Iturbi name has been firmly established in North America since his New York debut in 1929. That was the beginning of a long and brilliant career in the United States, not only at the key¬ board but on the conductor’s podium — a parallel career which began in 1933. He is especially well known for his conducting of the stage works of Manuel de Falla at New York’s City Center and at Barcelona’s Gran Teatro del Liceo, although, as in his piano repertoire, he avoids over-emphasis on Spanish composers. As an artist Iturbi is a true cosmopolitan.

Today he lives in Beverly Hills, California, near his pianist sister Amparo. By reducing his playing and conducting engagements to about eighty a year he has been able to pursue two special interests: preparation of an edition of Albeniz’ Iberia and composing. Although tours and recording engage¬ ments take him to many parts of the world every season (this album was recorded in Paris) he re¬ mains a passionately Americanized Spaniard; he has chosen California for one simple reason — be¬ cause it reminds him of Spain.

Side One: Granados

Enrique Granados was seven years Albeniz’s junior, bom at Lerida in 1867. He spent his youth in Barcelona until 1887, when he went to Paris to study the piano, sharing rooms with his fellow-countryman, the pianist Ricardo Vines. He gave his first recital at Barcelona in 1890 and two years later three of his Spanish Dances — from the same set as those recorded here — were given in orchestral form. After 1898, when his “Maria del Carmen” was given in Madrid, Granados wrote a number of stage pieces for the Catalan theater, but he remained first and fore¬ most a pianist and a composer for the piano. Like Albeniz, he is best remembered by the pieces which he wrote towards the end of his life, “Goyescas,” which were also used as the basis of an opera. The influence of the German romantic composers, including Wagner, and of Chopin, Liszt and Grieg are all strong in his music, though its basic character is Spanish and its inspiration often local and popular. He was drowned in 1916 with his wife, as he Was returning from the U.S.A. on the Sussex, torpedoed by a German submarine between Folkestone and Dieppe.

Allegro di Concierto in C sharp major [band 1], This was written in 1903 as a test piece for piano pupils at the Madrid Conservatory, a fact which explains the empty and uncharacteristic nature of the first six and last two pages and some grandiose pianism which recalls that of Liszt’s transcriptions. There is little unambiguously Spanish about the material, but the G major melody of the Andante spianato section would be enough to ensure the popularity of any work when combined with the deliberate showiness of the piano writing.

Spanish Dance No. 5 in E minor, “Andaluza” [band 2J. A simple character piece, in which the throbbing rhythms and melancholy of the minor are contrasted with the strong, simple lines and harmonies of the major section.

Spanish Dance No. 10 in G major [band 3], The chief characteristic of this dance, apart from its persistent rhythm, is the alternation of tonic and dominant which, in one form or another, provides Spanish composers with seemingly inexhaustible material for variation. The middle section takes the form of a dialogue.

Spanish Dance No. 12 in A minor [band 4], Here the languorous thirds, the grace notes in the bass and the suggestion of castanets and plucked guitars make a sensuous impression which is at odds with the reminis¬ cences of Grieg, unmistakeable in the central Mnlto andante espressivo.

Side Two: Albeniz

Isaac Albeniz had a romantically checkered career such as the public at one time regarded as the ideal background for a great piano virtuoso. He was an infant prodigy, bom at Barcelona in 1860 and appearing in public for the first time at the age of four. He ran away from the Madrid Conservatory at the age of thriteen, supported himself by giv¬ ing concerts in Central and North America and, on his return to Europe, appeared in Liverpool and London before entering the Leipzig Con¬ servatory as a pupil of Jadassohn and Reinecke. He soon moved on to Brussels, where an official Spanish grant enabled him to work with Gevaert and Brassin, but his ambition was to study with Liszt, and in 1878 he went to Budapest. By the age of twenty he commanded a repertory astonishing in its size and variety for a young artist whose studies had been so haphazard. The concertos by Moscheles (two), Ries and Rubinstein represented the fashionable taste of an age already pass¬ ing, but not many young virtuosos in 1880 played J. S. Bach, Handel, Couperin, Haydn (four sonatas), Mozart (three concertos, five sonatas) as well as Weber, Mendelssohn and Schumann. Chopin is surprisingly poorly represented and so, considering Albeniz’ admiration, is Liszt (one fantasy and eight pieces). In 1883 he married and spent several years teaching in Madrid until successful concerts in Paris and London enabled him to return to Paris to study composition with d’lndy and Dukas. From 1890 to 1893 Albeniz lived in London under the patronage of Francis Burdett Money-Coutts (later Lord Latymer), whose librettos he set to music. In 1893 he settled finally in Paris, where Chausson and the com¬ posers of the Schola Cantorum were among his closest friends, but after 1900 he spent much time in Spain, dying at Cambo-les-Bains in the Pyrenees in 1909.

Albeniz was an enormously prolific composer of a purely instinctive, improvisatory kind. His only carefully “worked” music is to be found in the four books of “Iberia,” which contain twelve large pieces written be¬ tween 1906 and 1909. These represent by far the most important sides of Albeniz’s character — his very individual, highly ornamented piano style with its characteristic “seasoning” of sharp harmonic clashes and the essence of his poetical gift, which lay in the evocation of Spanish places and atmospheres, songs and dances. This he achieved not by direct bor¬ rowing of folk material but by elaborate and highly stylized use of characteristic rhythms, harmonies and melodies. Many of his earlier com¬ positions are hardly more than salon pieces, but they are written with a verve and charm, an experience of the keyboard and a simple sense of conventional local color that can still delight audiences. Some of the best of these earlier pieces are to be found in the “Suite Espanola,” from which Jose Iturbi plays three on this record.

Asturias ( Leyenda) (No. 5 of “Suite espanola”) [band 1 ]. Like so many of Albeniz’ pieces, this is in a simple ternary form. In the opening section (Allegro ma non troppo) the melody is heard in the left hand beneath a pedal D which lasts over thirty bars in the form of staccato sixteenths plainly suggesting a guitar and punctuated by explosive chords of in¬ creasing violence. The key is a modal G minor, with flattened leading tone. In strong contrast to this, the middle section is calm and punctuated with many pauses — an oriental-sounding melody announced by the two hands two octaves apart. Then the first section returns and there is a momentary reminiscence of the middle section in the coda.

Sevillanas (No. 3 of “Suite espanola”) [band 2], Although Albeniz was born a Catalan, he himself declared a preference for Andalusia. This piece opens with a simple introductory figure which occurs repeatedly and is found in more sophisticated form in the composer’s later evocation of Seville, “Triana.” The opening section (Allegro moderato) consists of a simple three-bar melodic phrase over a strong rhythmic accompaniment and a tonic pedal in the bass. This is announced twice in G major, then in B flat major, modulating back to G major. The same process is repeated in E flat major and D major, which leads back to a still further repetition in G major. The middle section — Meno mosso, C-minor — consists of a modal theme announced by both hands two octaves apart, as in the preceding piece, and varied with ornamental triplets. This is repeated and leads back to a repetition of the first half of the first section.

Cadiz (Cancion) (No. 4 of “Suite espanola”) [band 3], Also known as “Serenade espagnole.” Here the rhythm and, in the middle section, some features of the melody are Spanish, but the harmony more often recalls

Schumann. In the middle section the melody is heard in the left hand and we meet again Albeniz’ characteristic widely spaced unison passages with their oriental atmosphere.

Tango in D major, Op. 165 No. 2 [band 4], A simple and attractive example of this Spanish American dance, with characteristic internal pedal, gently dotted rhythm and voluptuous triplets.

Cordoba (No. 4 of “Cantos de Espana,” Op. 232) [band 5], Another “evocation” to which the composer has given the key in a quotation printed above the score: “In the silence of the night, only interrupted by the breezes in the jasmine, the guzlas’ melodies are passionate, their notes as sweet as the swaying treetops.” The piece is in fact a nocturne which opens with a hymn-like section recalling the religioso of Chopin’s G minor Nocturne. This is followed by a plaintive melody, over chromat¬ ically falling bass and with guitar-like accompaniment, that rises to a climax of almost orchestral proportions and suddenly breaks off as the hymn-like melody returns pianissimo. The guitars, and the voice that rises above them, return to finish the piece.

Notes ®1960 MARTIN COOPER

More by Jose Iturbi on (monophonic only) mozart: Sonatas No. L Beethoven: Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor (“Moonlight”).

Angel 35378

“iturbi treasures”: Shorter works by Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, Lazar and Granados.

Angel Records:

l in A. K. 331. and No. 12 in F, 332.

Angel 35347

SIDE 1

SPANISH PIANO MUSIC

JOSE ITURBI

GRANADOS • Allegro di Concierto In C sharp major

'• Spanish Dance No. 5 in E minor ("An

. Spanish Dance No. 10 in G major

• Spanish Dance No. 12 in A minor

Manufactured in U.S.A.

Recorded in France