Biography of enrique granados spanish dance 2

Selected and reviewed by ANDREW EALES
Find out more: ABOUT PIANODAO REVIEWS

Enrique Granados () was one of the great composers to expand the piano repertoire in the twilight years of the Romantic era, and must be counted among Spain’s most marvellous writers for the instrument; so it is a shame that so much of his output remains too little-known and rarely performed.

Less than a handful of easy miniatures have been picked up by exam boards and anthologies, despite the fact that Granados composed a significant body of music suitable for intermediate and early advanced players. Meanwhile, the mighty cycle Goyescas belongs aside his compatriot Albéniz’s Iberia suites, but alas, only a couple of movements appear on concert programmes with any frequency. That much of Granados&#;s music has been difficult to find in good, widely available editions doesn’t help.

At the centre of Granados’s output, the twelve Danzas españolas are a fabulous collection suitable for the advanced player (around UK Grades ). And while (unlike Albéniz) much of Granados’s solo piano music is closer in tone to Schumann than to Spanish flamenco, these pieces are replete with the regional flair and the sunny countenance that lends colour and a hint of exoticism to the best Spanish music. This is Granados at his most rustic.

Those wanting to play the Danzas Españolas relied on old editions by IMP and Dover. Happily, these marvellous pieces can now be explored in a superb new urtext from Henle Verlag, the subject of this review&#;

The Music

Granados was born in the Catalan town of Lerida, grew up in Barcelona (where he also studied), and completed his piano education privately in Paris. It was towards the end of this time, still only just in his 20&#;s, that he began to compose his Danzas Españolas, the twelve Spanish Dances.

Originally collected in four volumes each of three pieces, published between , the Spanish Dances had no individual titles with the sole exception of V

Bio

Enrique Granados ( ) was a Spanish pianist and composer, a leader of the movement toward nationalism in late 19th-century Spanish music. Granados made his debut as a pianist at He studied composition in Barcelona with Felipe Pedrell, the father of Spanish nationalism in music. He studied piano in Paris in Returning to Barcelona in , he established himself as a pianist of the front rank, and his 12 Danzas españolas achieved great popularity. The first of his seven operas, María del Carmen, was produced in In Granados founded a short-lived classical-concerts society and his own piano school, which produced a number of distinguished players. His interest in the 18th century is reflected in his tonadillas, songs written “in the ancient style.” He wrote extensively and fluently for the piano, in a somewhat diffuse, Romantic style. His masterpieces, the Goyescas (–13), are reflections on Francisco de Goya’s paintings and tapestries. They were adapted into an opera that received its premiere in New York City in Returning home from this performance, Granados drowned when his ship, the Sussex, was torpedoed by a German submarine.

  • Enrique Granados in Spanish or Enric

    • Enrique Granados

    Spanish pianist and composer

    For other people with the same name, see Enrique Granados (swimmer) and Enrique Granados (water polo).

    In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Granados and the second or maternal family name is Campiña.

    Pantaleón Enrique Joaquín Granados Campiña (27 July &#;– 24 March ), commonly known as Enrique Granados in Spanish or Enric Granados in Catalan, was a Spanishcomposer of classical music, and concert pianist from Catalonia, Spain. His most well-known works include Goyescas, the Spanish Dances&#;[es], and María del Carmen.

    Life

    Pantaleón Enrique Joaquín Granados Campiña was born in Lleida, Spain, the son of Calixto José de la Trinidad Granados y Armenteros, a Spanish army captain who was born in Havana, Cuba, and Enriqueta Elvira Campiña de Herrera, from Santander, Spain. As a young man he studied piano in Barcelona, where his teachers included Francisco Jurnet and Joan Baptista Pujol. In he went to Paris to study. He was unable to become a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but he was able to take private lessons with a conservatoire professor, Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, whose mother, the soprano Maria Malibran, was of Spanish ancestry. Bériot insisted on extreme refinement in tone production, which strongly influenced Granados's teaching of pedal technique. He also fostered Granados's abilities in improvisation. Just as important were his studies with Felip Pedrell. He returned to Barcelona in His first successes were at the end of the s, with the opera María del Carmen, which attracted the attention of King Alfonso XIII.

    In , Granados participated in a competition organized by Tomás Bretón of the Madrid Royal Conservatory, which awarded a considerable sum of pesetas for the best "concert allegro" for solo piano. Granados submitted his Allegro de concierto, Op. 46, for which the jury declared him the winner with an almost unanimous vote.

  • Granados was born in the

    • Granados - Andaluza: No 5 from Spanish Dances

    Background

    Enrique Granados ( - ) is perhaps most famed for his piano composition, Goyescas, a suite of pieces based on paintings of Goya. Granados, himself, was also a painter of some distinction.

    The set of twelve Spanish Dances, for piano, was written in

    A composer of Catalan origins, his style is very much that of Spanish nationalism, with the influence of the guitar often evident.

    Granados himself may be heard playing here on an old piano roll recording dated around

    Pupil Match & Suitability

    Students with a fiery temperament and a sense of passion should do well if choosing this piece.

    It needs a certain musical maturity to bring it off. There is considerable repetition here and a feeling for the spontaneity of mood is needed so that the character does not become predictable and boring.

    Style & Tempo

    The Spanish style is full of colour, daring and panache, even in the more gentle tempi.

    There should be rhythmic vitality, suppleness of phrasing and tonal variety and beauty. Strength and tenderness mixed in almost equal proportions go towards creating the allure of the style. Think twice if you consider your student may simply not be suited to playing in this style.

    A keen sense of the Spanish character and style may be found when listening to Granados payed on Spanish guitar, as in this beautifully expressive performance by Stefano Grondona:

    Phrasing & Articulation

    There are two principal elements to the articulation here:

    (i) the underlying rhythmic thrust of the dance

    (ii) the melancholic lyrical line

    Within both of these there is accentuation and, in the RH, cantabile.

    Tone & Texture

    This should have warmth and life to it. There is no room here for timid tone or lacklustre mood. The tone must always have depth and meaning.

    The range of dynamics goes from the glowing embers of a pp at the very end to the passionate ff marcando on the prolonged dominant c