Iberia complete

When Debussy declared that Albéniz “put the best of himself” into Iberia he was actually understating the extent of his Spanish colleague’s achievement. In Iberia Albéniz transformed himself. It is a big work - four books of three pieces each, lasting not far short of ninety minutes in all - and it is an immense virtuoso challenge. But its greatest quality, which distinguishes it from even the most accomplished of his earlier piano music, is its newly evolved keyboard language. Albéniz seems to have realised that a piano technique derived basically from Liszt and material drawn from Spanish folk-music are essentially incompatible. Certainly after La Vega, which illustrates the problem most vividly, he wrote no more piano music until, eight years later, he started on Iberia. Completed only a year before his death, it was his masterpiece and his last major work.

Albéniz’s new keyboard language was a translation into piano terms of the authentic texture of Andalusian folk music, not just its characteristic rhythms and its modal harmonies but its actual sound, the plucked articulation of the guitar, the impassioned singing voice, the percussive effects of castanets, hand claps and heel taps. He had been working towards it for years, of course - and both Debussy and Ravel had anticipated it to some extent - but it wasn’t until he came to write Iberia that his new language was so well developed as to sustain a work of such length without regular recourse to conventional piano writing. The romantic piano is still there but, for the most part, merged into the new style, filling it out and elaborating it but not contradicting it.

Navarra (1908)

completed by William Bolcom (b1938)

Originally intended for Book 4 of Iberia, Navarra was abandoned shortly before it was finished and left incomplete on the composer’s death. Albeniz apparently felt that it was too “plebeian” to be included in the official canon. Certainly, it has nothing of the delicate poetry of Jerez, which replaced it and is nowhere near as thoughtful or as developed in structure. It is no less inspired, however, even if dissonance is put to comic rather than expressive use in this case and even if it is so uninhibited in its celebration of Spanish melody that, as he was obviously aware, it could invite the more fastidious of his critics to question the composer’s taste.

The clashing bitonal chords in the opening bars, where A flat major eventually wins a noisy competition with F minor, give some notice of the sort of thing that is to follow. It is scarcely predictable, however, that, shortly after the entry of the first main theme, the right hand should slip into F flat while the left continues in A flat and then, in an effort to correct the anomaly, make matters even worse. The way out of the situation is to pretend that F flat was always intended and that the right hand was merely anticipating the moment a few bars later when the left joins it in a mutually agreeable modulation into that unlikely key.

A brief but brilliant development, which begins with a grotesquely emphatic recall of the bitonal opening bars, is cut short by a dramatic pause, a grandiloquent build-up of expectation and the ffff entry of the broadly expansive theme of the middle section. Albéniz treats this popular tune, absurdly but irresistibly, with every Lisztian and Spanish vernacular means at his disposal. Whether he would have recalled it in the coda, after the full-scale reprise of the first section, we do not know. His friend Déodat de Séverac, whose completed version was published in 1912, clearly decided that he would not. William Bolcom, whose more recent completion is being performed on this occasion, might offer a different solution.

Iberia: 12 new Impressions in four books

Book 1 (1906)

Evocación: allegretto espressivo

El Puerto: allegro commodo

El Corpus en Sevilla: allegro gracioso - vivo - andante

Although he was born in Catalonia, Albéniz wasn’t specially interested in Catalan folk music. There are a few Catalan inspirations among his earlier orchestral and piano pieces but when he came to write his last great tribute to Spain in Iberia he turned almost exclusively to Andalusia for his material. For Albeniz, as for Falla and Turina after him, the flamenco or cante hondo element in the folk music of Andalusia made it much more interesting than that of the other Spanish regions. After the introductory Evocación, the one piece in Iberia that is not associated in one way or another with the South of Spain is Lavapiés, which clearly derives from Madrid.

As an evocation of the spirit of Spanish music rather than an allusion to one particular place, Evocación is more generalised in its local colouring than the other pieces in the collection. The essential quality of the nostalgic, reputedly Basque melody that opens the piece in A flat minor is not its regional associations but the dreamily impressionistic harmonies in which it is set and developed. The expressive second subject, which rises in the left hand under C flat major arpeggios in the right, is rather more specific in the unmistakably flamenco-style decoration of its cadences. After a poetically effective recall of the second subject in A flat major, in the right hand this time, the piece very quietly and ruminatively ends in that key.

The port referred to in El Puerto has been identified as Santa Maria on the Bay of Cádiz. Albéniz recalls the atmosphere of the place with a polo, an animated dance in 6/8 time set here in D flat major and coloured by brusque syncopations and vigorous heel taps. A more expressive melody is introduced low in the left hand but, although it is developed alongside the opening theme in the middle section, it has little part to play in the last section of the piece, which joyously recalls the polo tune before taking a lingering farewell of it.

El Corpus en Sevilla is outstanding among the twelve “impressions” not only because it is the one programmatic piece in the collection but also because it is so startlingly visionary in its inspiration. Based on a memory of a Corpus Christi celebration in Seville, it is a direct anticipation of the expressions of religious fervour Olivier Messiaen was to present in similarly extreme keyboard terms thirty or forty years later.

The Corpus Christi procession begins in the distance with muffled drum rolls and gets gradually nearer and louder as the F sharp minor march that accompanies it accumulates more and more harmonic and textural interest. At its ffff climax it explodes into F sharp major with a dazzlingly radiant variant of the march tune at the top end of the keyboard and a chorale melody sustained in heavy left-hand octaves beneath it. When the dynamic level drops to ppp it is for the first of a series of saetas, ever quieter and separated by short pauses, sung from the balconies of houses as the procession passes by. A compressed recapitulation of the first part, with the volume now screwed up to fffff on the entry of the chorale, is followed by a brilliant contrapuntal treatment of the march tune, a vigorous diminution of the same tune in triple time, and a lingering Andante postlude echoing with fragments of cante hondo melody and scarcely perceptible bells.

Book 2 (1906)

Rondeña: allegretto

Almería: allegretto moderato - andante

Triana: allegretto con anima

One of the most interesting effects of Albéniz’s contact with Spanish folk music was its liberation of his rhythms. Rondeña features the version of the Andalusian fandango associated with the gorge-split town of Ronda, alternating 6/8 with 3/4 and savouring the resultant anomalies through an extended, inexhaustibly resourceful and highly coloured guitar-style prelude. It is some time, in fact, before the main theme makes its first entry, in staccato articulation in the right hand over legato figures in the left. And no sooner has it asserted itself than the tempo slows down to admit another theme, this one an expressive vocal melody which is notated with ingenious mathematical flexibility to ensure that its natural rhythms fit without distortion into the prevailing metre. On the return of the opening tempo we do not have to wait quite so long for the re-entry of the main theme, now in the left hand in the middle of the keyboard, or for the recall of the vocal melody, which is briefly and spectacularly combined with the first theme before it is given its own space to expand.

Almería, on the Mediterranean and well to the east of Ronda but still in Andalusia, inspired a similar kind of piece. At the heart of Almería, as of Rondeña, is a vocal melody metrically distinct from its accompaniment - in this case an expressive copla in 4/4 time sensitively set against the 6/8 continuing from the first section and destined to remain the underlying metre throughout. Although Albéniz does not attempt to combine the main themes this time, he does include between the two appearances of the vocal melody a remarkably adventurous, even sensational development of the opening material.

The sound of the flamenco guitar is nowhere clearer in Book 2 of Iberia than in Triana. An evocation of the Triana district of Seville, it takes the same shape as most of the other movements in the collection, with a lively paso doble set in direct contrast to a song-like material with a more sustained melodic line. Both themes are introduced in the first place as though by a guitar, or at least accompanied by one, but they are developed in an extraordinary and highly imaginative episode of keyboard bravura and recalled with even more virtuoso brilliance when they are combined in counterpoint in the recapitulation. The quiet coda, apart from the very loud last two bars, is pure guitar.

Book 4 (1908)

Málaga: allegro vivo

Jerez: andantino

Eritaña: allegretto grazioso

Málaga has its own distinctive version of the fandango, the comparatively languorous or even melancholy malagueña. After a capricious guitarist’s prelude, Albéniz’s Málaga features two such dances: the first of them is introduced in legato octaves in the right hand, the second and more expressive of the two in a plaintive voice in the left hand, where it remains until a more animated episode takes it in brightly coloured triads towards the top end of the keyboard. Although both are developed and recapitulated, it is the more robust first theme that attracts the more dramatic treatment.

Jerez, which replaced the abandoned Navarra, was the last of the twelve “impressions” to be written. Far from being the perfunctory piece one might have expected from a composer already suffering from the kidney disease that was to end his life only three months after its first performance, it is the longest piece in the whole collection. The construction is held together by an unfailing interest in a little cadence figure first heard in the second bar and heard again in nearly every bar thereafter. Obsessive though those repetitions might be, they do allow the composer to explore some intriguing ideas while the familiar figure echoes on under the surface, as in a peculiarly sensuous passage where the harmonies undulate through chromatic shifts from bar to bar. Rousing himself from that dreamy episode, Albéniz restores his little figure to full and active prominence and then infiltrates it into the accompaniment of a fragment of expressive vocal melody. That new melody becomes a parallel source of obsession, provoking a central climax before the first theme introduces an abbreviated recapitulation.

Whatever its eccentricities, Jerez is certainly more effective than Navarra would have been in offsetting Eritaña, which was always intended to be the last piece in Book 4. Eritaña, named after a popular tavern outside the customs gates in Seville, is another popular celebration not unlike Navarra in its vigour and its harmonic exuberance. Based on sevillana rhythms throughout, it has no time for the love song found in most of the other pieces. The odd lyrical item is admitted from time to time, just enough to add a little variety to the atmosphere but never enough to halt the reckless modulations, the ribald dissonances and the intoxicated piano writing.

Book 3 (1907)

El Albaicín: allegro assai, ma melancolico

El polo: allegro melancolico

Lavapiés: allegretto bien rythmé mais sans presser

The four books of Iberia were written in the order in which they were published. They were also first performed in that order (by Blanche de Selva, the dedicatee of Book 3) as each one was completed. This does not necessarily mean, however, that chronological order is the most effective way of presenting the complete collection. Anyone who believes in the principle of saving the best for the last would choose to end not with Book 4 but, as one this occasion, with Book 3, which is the most consistently inspired of the set.

There is no better example of Albéniz’s Iberia style than El Albaicín, one of the most poetic of all Albéniz’s evocations of Andalusia. Named after the old gypsy quarter in Granada, it reminded Debussy “of those Spanish evenings filled with the perfume of carnations and the alcoholic fumes of aguardiente” - though probably not until the sultry ending of the piece. A somewhat melancholy nocturnal scene in B flat minor to begin with, it is based on two themes, each representing a basic element of flamenco music - a dance rhythm heard as though on a distant guitar that gets more animated as it gets nearer and, after a short pause, an expressive cante hondo melody introduced in octaves in the Dorian mode. The two are developed in alternation and, though not without romantic bravura at one point, ever more passionately. At least as moving as the central climax, however, is the epilogue that reintroduces the cante hondo in a serene B flat major and sustains the tranquillity until a suddenly violent but still B flat major ending.

El polo is a peculiarly ambiguous piece, an unhappy guitarist’s brooding improvisation on an obsessive polo rhythm, the lively dance implications of which are negated by the tortured modulations it goes through and the bitter harmonies it collides with. There are two vocal entries, both of them passionate three-note exclamations followed by an ominous silence. The radiance apparently achieved just before the end is brusquely dismissed by the closing bars.

The last piece in Book 3 is reputedly the most difficult in the whole work and is certainly the only one (apart from the introductory Evocación) which finds its inspiration outside Andalusia. Although it is named after a district of Madrid traditionally associated with the Maundy Thursday foot-washing ceremony, Lavapiés is an impression not of a church event but of a rowdy popular celebration. Beginning as a comparatively decorous habanera, it is confronted by a riot of conflicting harmonies and then, on an emphatic cadence, it just stops. This, it turns out, is to make way for a vigorously strummed rhythmic figure preceding the entry of a new tune - a sentimental song which becomes the much varied, much abused and much teased object of thematic interest from now on, right up to its surreal treatment in whole tones in the closing bars.

Gerald Larner ©2003