Isaac Albéniz: "Asturias", Leyenda

The Catalan child prodigy Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz was born in 1860 in a city in the province of Gerona, Spain. When he was only four took place his first public presentation at the piano, performing a very difficult program that earned him a resounding success, to the extent that the organizers were suspected of deception and even rumours were circulating that behind the scenes there was a pianist who doubled the child's interpretation.

But no, it was the child who actually played the piano. As one critic pointed out, it was "the new Mozart returned to earth". It was not an opinion so far from reality because this new Mozart also had an ambitious father who did not give up trying to exploit the child's extraordinary skills for music, urging him to "compose" as soon as possible, with the happy result of a military March, whose printed score the father requested to be added: "composed by eight-year-old Isaac Albéniz".

Isaac Albéniz (1860 - 1909), around 1872

Isaac entered the conservatory in Madrid at age eight but at ten decided to take a getaway. So, he took the first train to El Escorial, where he offered several recitals at the town's casino. Then, he left. He returned to Madrid but before arriving, he decided to get off at any station and took a train in the opposite direction, thus initiating his first great artistic tour through several cities in Spain.

He returned to the Conservatory but soon after went to Andalusia, where he increased his triumphant series of performances. But shortly after he reached Cadiz, decided to embark as a stowaway on a ship that was leaving for Puerto Rico. He had no ticket but there was a piano on board. Thanks to it, he was able to pay for his ticket and reach American lands. The piano's child prodigy and also of the adventures was then twelve years old.

Asturias, Leyenda
It is one of the pieces that make up the suite for solo piano Spanish Suite, composed around 1886. The suite originally consisted of four parts. An editor added another four after the composer's death (1909), including a prelude corresponding to another suite and called it Asturias, Leyenda (legend).

This piece must be one of the few works that transcribed for another instrument acquire another dimension and are more beautiful than the original version. So much so that Asturias is most frequently performed in his transcription for guitar than in the original for piano, which is always a little rough, due, needless to say, to the difficulties presented by the huge jumps in the keyboard.
In contrast, the virtuous Croatian guitarist Ana Vidovic in this recital in New York plays the piece without batting an eyelid.

Tárrega: "Recuerdos de La Alhambra"

The "Spanish guitar", as we know it today, added its sixth string only at the end of the 18th century. Before, it had five strings and also four, and the instrument was called differently. It remained an "amateur" instrument from the 17th century until the beginning of the 19th century, although during that period it enjoyed many virtuosos, among them Gaspar Sanz (around 1674) and later Fernando Sor (1778-1839).

Only in the mid-nineteenth century would the sustained development of the instrument and the technique of the "classical guitar" emerge, thanks to the contributions of the Spanish romantic composer Francisco Tárrega, born in Villarreal in 1852 and died in Barcelona in 1909. His transcriptions of works from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and other composers underlie the concert repertoire for classical guitar of our times.

Francisco Tárrega (1852 - 1909)

And he also made a contribution, of course. One of its most popular pieces is known as Recuerdos de La Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra), a beautiful and simple melody inspired by the palace and fortress complex built on a rocky hill in Granada, Spain, dating from the mid-fourteenth century. In 1492, with the conquest of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs, it became the royal palace.

Memories of the Alhambra demands from the performer proper handling of the "tremolo" technique, wherein a single melody note is plucked consecutively by the ring, middle and index fingers in such rapid succession, with the support of the thumb that pulsates a lower string doing its part in the harmonic framework. Proficient performance of a tremolo will tend to make the repeated string resemble a long sustained note, as may a violin, for example.
The rendition, brilliant, is by the Croatian guitarist Ana Vidovic, who, curiously, plays the tremolo with only two fingers.

Beethoven and the Viennese - Sonata No 7

Many years after the death of Beethoven (1827), the municipal authorities of Vienna decided to demolish an old theater where the maestro had played the piano. It is said that at the end of the last performance, the Viennese remained standing for a while, crying, excited.
Vienna had declared him an adopted son in 1815, but around 1880, his music was somewhat extreme, or too unique for the taste of the Viennese of the time. Beethoven, on the other hand, did not have a positive impression of the Viennese, at least that was the case during the first years after having settled in the capital of the empire, in 1793. Thus, he even wrote, for example:

"These Viennese are worthless, from the emperor to the last shoeshine boy, how can one become part of this country, the Viennese are people without heart, there is not a single man honoured in the general decline of Austria, only particular circumstances hold me here, where everything is dirty and ruined, they are all thieves, from the highest to the lowest of the social scale ... "

Vienna and the Viennese
On another occasion, he expressed his disappointment with the liberal groups that greeted with great enthusiasm the French Revolution at a time when the European courts watch in horror the development of events in revolutionary France:

"these people only think about laughing, drinking and dancing ... while they have beer and sausages, there will be no revolution ..."

In apparent contradiction to this thought, in addition to the group of his students highly well chosen from among the most select and well-to-do of Viennese society, Beethoven had a small but conspicuous circle of high-line friendships. Between the years 1797-1803, among them was a senior officer of the Russian Imperial Service in Vienna, to whose wife, Anne Margaret von Browne, the maestro dedicated the three sonatas of Opus 10, composed around 1798.

Sonata No. 7, Op. 10 No. 3 Is the most extensive of the trio. It lasts around 24 minutes and is the only one written in four movements:
00:00  Presto
05:20  Largo e mesto (maybe one of Beethoven's most beautiful slow movements)
15:29  Menuetto: Allegro
18:04  Rondo: Allegro

The rendition is by the American pianist Eric Zuber.

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A. Ginastera: "Danza de la Moza Donosa"

As any respectable dictatorship would do, that of General Onganía in Argentina in the sixties did not beat about the bush to apply censorship to a wide range of cultural manifestations. In the field of music, a ballet by Béla Bártok and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky were censored. And as a fair law is not a strict law, was also banned the performance of Bomarzo opera, a work from a compatriot, a fellow, the composer Alberto Ginastera, prohibited by decree due to his "excessive reference to sex, violence and hallucination."

Ginastera (1916 - 1983), one of the most outstanding Latin American composers of the 20th century was at that time an international celebrity. He had studied with Aaron Copland (among those who had studied with him were Astor Piazzolla and Waldo de Los Ríos). But the most important Argentine composer of all time never maintained good relations with the political authorities, whether dictatorships or not.
In the year 1945, he was exonerated from his position as professor of the Military Lyceum. After a series of skirmishes with Peronism, a Guggenheim scholarship allowed him to leave the country.

Upon his return, two years later, he founded the Conservatorio de La Plata, which he was its director. The authorities forced him to give the conservatory the name of Eva Perón, which Ginastera opposed. Evita had justly promoted the female vote, but from the point of view of art she was a good reciter and very popular actress of radio drama series but nothing linked her to music. Ginastera was again exonerated in 1952, for being "anti-Peronist".

Danzas Argentinas, opus 2
An author of an extensive work of chamber music, two concertos for piano, two for cello, one for violin, three operas and many others, Alberto Ginastera became a leading figure of Argentine musical nationalism. His composition for piano, Danzas Argentinas, 1937, led to the identification of his music throughout the world as the "music of the pampas", the "gaucho" music. The Danzas... comes from an early period he called 'objective nationalism', in which he often used folk themes.
So, the three dances that make up the piece carry a title of great evocative power: "Danza del viejo boyero" (roughly translated as Dance of the old Oxen-Keeper), "Danza de la Moza Donosa" (Dance of the graceful maiden) and "Danza del gaucho matrero" (Dance of the Bandit Gaucho).
Danzas Argentinas enjoyed great popularity since its premiere and today they are part of the traditional repertoire of pianists, at least of Latin Americans.

Danza de la moza donosa
In a brilliant rendition, the first-rate Argentinean pianist, Martha Argerich, plays the second dance, "Danza de la moza donosa". A live performance in Amsterdam, when Marthita was a maiden, and also a "donosa" maiden.

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Scott Joplin, the King of Ragtime

In New York, 1913, there were plenty of wealthy black people who moved to Harlem and bought a house there. Oddly enough, among them, there was a musician: the pianist Scott Joplin, composer of ragtimes and author of two operas. He was born in 1867, a good time to be born if you were black because two years before Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed the emancipation of all slaves. That was the good news because one year after the executive order, the Ku-Klux-Klan was born.

Turned into a pianist thanks to his formidable talent and the free lessons from a German teacher, Joplin decided to follow in the footsteps of Johannes Brahms and Isaac Albéniz, and at age 20 he began to make a living playing the piano in bars and taverns, as a travelling pianist through Mississippi Valley, visiting cities that usually maintained an enviable inter-racial co-existence, to the point that there is no public record of lynchings, at least in the 1890s.

Soon Joplin began to compose his own pieces, brief, syncopated, with a "ragged" rhythm (a ragged time), in the style of the popular ragtime, which although already predominating in black music, was Joplin who took it to a higher stage. His more successful composition, Maple Leaf Rag, of 1897, got to sell hundreds of thousands of copies in the USA. According to some, Joplin received a percentage that allowed him later to buy a beautiful house in St. Louis. According to others, the money earned did not exceed 600 dollars per year, for a short period.

The Sting
Perhaps today we would not remember Scott Joplin were it not for the movie The Sting, 1973, which included as part of its soundtrack the piano piece The Entertainer, composed in 1901. The film gave rise to a renewed interest in his music; in 1974, a New York Times columnist claimed: "Hey musicologists, it's time to pay attention to Joplin" ... Nothing would have made Joplin happier than an invocation like that because from the beginning he claimed for ragtime a status similar to that of the "serious" music coming from Europe. Joplin was right. A musicologist from our days clearly maintains that ragtime is "the exact equivalent, in terms of local style, of Mozart's minuets, Chopin's mazurkas or Strauss waltzes".

Maple Leaf Rag
Scott Joplin died in New York, in 1917, closer to poverty than to abundance, notwithstanding the house in Harlem.
The rendition, allegedly, is from Joplin himself: a piano roll found by chance.

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