Isaac Albéniz: Portrait of a Romantic

ISBN-13: 9780199250523 / Angielski / Miękka / 2002 / 360 str.

Walter Aaron Clark

Opis

Walter Aaron Clark here presents, for the first time in English, a detailed and accurate account of one of the most intriguing figures in the Romantic period. Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909), a renowned concert pianist, created a national style of Spanish piano music and also fostered the growth of the concerto, orchestral music, and opera in Spain. As a touring child prodigy who supposedly stowed away on a steamer to the New World, later studied with Liszt, and eventually got ensnared in a "Faustian pact" with the wealthy English librettist, Frances Burdett Money-Coutts, Albeniz has become somewhat of a legend. Based on a wealth of new and previously overlooked documentary evidence, this biography debunks the mythology surrounding his career, much of it spun by the composer himself.

Recenzje

Clark makes a convincing case for a revision of received opinion in a clear, scholarly but readable narrative that is refreshingly untrendy ... Clark's biography has much to recommend it. I particularly enjoyed the depiction of fin-de-siècle European musical life that forms a kind of incidental accompaniment to the main story.