Isaac Albéniz

Albéniz is mainly remembered today for one work, Iberia, considered a major masterpiece of the piano repertory. He was born in 1860 in Camprodon in the Spanish region of Catalonia, and was a piano-playing prodigy who gave his first public concert at age four. Based mostly in Madrid from 1883, he pursued a Europe-wide performing career before settling in Paris in 1894. Inspired by the traditional music of Spain and the sound of the guitar, Albéniz produced numerous piano pieces that at their best show a striking individuality, as in Asturias and Córdoba (published in 1892 and 1898). His operas Pepita Jiménez (1895, revised 1904) and Henry Clifford (1893-95) were based on libretti by the English banker and writer Francis Money-Coutts. In 1905 Albéniz began work on Iberia, a large-scale cycle of 12 virtuoso piano works in four books, brilliantly exploring the sounds, moods, and dance rhythms of the different regions of Spain. He was working on Navarra, for a projected fifth book, when he died of kidney failure in 1909.