This week you will be listening to the music of Isaac Albeniz, a Spanish composer and pianist who lived from 1860-1909.  He was born in Spain and many of his piano works are based on folk music and idioms from his native country.

He was a child prodigy, giving piano concerts in Spain at the age of nine and by the time he was fifteen he had concertized worldwide.  He studied piano at both the conservatories of Leipzig and Brussels

He wrote various genres of music including some musical comedies, but primarily it is for his piano music that he is remembered.  Iberia, a suite of twelve piano impressions, written between 1905-1908, was his final masterpiece.  In this suite he takes the flavors of Spain with its rhythms and folk melodies and weaves them throughout this marvelous composition.

Albeniz died at the age of forty-eight from kidney disease having only three weeks before received from the French government its highest honor, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d’honneur.

Iberia played by Alicia de Larrocha