Search - Isaac Albeniz, Guillermo González :: Albéniz: Piano Music, Vol. 3

Salon Music for Piano by Isaac Albéniz

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 05/11/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"No one would mistake any of the music on this disc, the third in Guillermo González' Albéniz traversal, as anything but pleasant salon music. That said, there is plenty here to enjoy. There are three sets of pieces contained herein.



The Six Spanish Dances (6 Danzas españolas), Op. 37, were written and published both as salon pieces and as didactic works, many dedicated to Albéniz' own students, most of them the daughters of the Spanish upper class. There is a discernible Cuban tint to much of this music -- Cuba was still a Spanish colony at the time; Albéniz had toured it as a pianist as early as 1875, when he was only fifteen (!), and again in the early 1880s -- with habañeras and Cuban tangos. No. 5 has hints of the mature Albéniz to come in such masterpieces as Ibéria.



The Six Little Waltzes (6 Pequeños valses), Op. 25, written in 1880 when the composer was only twenty and already known as a virtuoso pianist and as a fashionable piano teacher in Madrid. These pieces are less obviously Spanish, deriving as they do from the piano music of Chopin. All are brief, unfailingly melodic, but harmonically and rhythmically less interesting than the composer's later music.



The Six Salon Mazurkas (6 Mazurkas de salón), Op. 66 are from 1885. They too were written for Albéniz' upper class female students and each bears a dedication, e.g. 'to my adorable little friend Christa Morphy' (who was the daughter of Count de Morphy, private secretary of King Alfonso XII and Albéniz' patron). Each mazurka is given a title naming its dedicatee, e.g., 'Isabel', 'Sofia', 'Casilda', et al. No. 5, dedicated to Señorita Morphy, is the most interesting (and the longest) in that it is a delicate presto that requires a player capable of rapid filigree. The last mazurka, No. 6, entitled 'Maria', is by far the most complex harmonically and probably the most indebted to the style of Chopin.



Guillermo González, as in the earlier Albéniz discs, plays musically and expressively. He is a marvelous exponent of Albéniz music and one hopes there will be more additions to this series.



Scott Morrison"