Pianistic splendor of color

Much of what the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz wrote for the piano in his relatively short life belongs in the realm of cultivated salon music. Of course, this does not apply to his masterpiece, the Suite Iberia, which was created during the last years of his life in Paris and Nice.

In this homage to his homeland, which he was no longer to see, Albéniz - not least under the influence of his French composer colleagues - unleashes a pianistic blaze of color that is unparalleled in the piano literature. It should be noted that, conversely Iberia has also rubbed off on many a French master: on Debussy, for example, in his Sérénade interrompueor to Messiaen, who considered the suite to be one of the greatest piano works ever written.

With the Fourth issue Henle-Verlag has now also published the last part of the suite, and in an exemplary manner. In the three concluding pieces, Malaga,Jerez and Eritaña, Albéniz once again pulls out all the stops Iberia are so typical: finely stylized Spanish dance rhythms, dazzling harmonies, long organ dots and dynamics that are differentiated to the extreme. The music is correspondingly complex. However, the editor Norbert Gertsch not only succeeds in eradicating the numerous printing errors and mistakes that haunt the older editions, but also in presenting the musical text, which is littered with many annotations by the composer, in an astonishingly lean and clear manner. This even applies to the final piece Eritaña (An inn near Seville), which is a tour de force for any pianist with its breakneck leaps and incessant voice crossings.

Debussy particularly loved this piece: "Jamais une musique n'atteint des impressions aussi différenciées et aussi colorées et les yeux se ferment comme s'ils étaient aveuglés par ces images toutes trop éclatantes."

Isaac Albéniz, Iberia, Viertes Heft, Urtext edited by Norbert Gertsch, HN 650, € 20.00, G. Henle, Munich 2013