Meet Isaac Albéniz – His Life and Work

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends of music,

My name is Isaac Albéniz. I was born in 1860 in the small Catalan town of Camprodon, Spain, and from the moment my little fingers first touched a piano key, the world seemed to open before me. I was a child prodigy — so restless that by the age of ten I had already run away more than once to give concerts across Spain and beyond. Music was adventure; every town, every theater, every note a new horizon.

Spain in my youth was alive with dance rhythms and folk melodies. I carried those sounds with me as I traveled: the sevillanas and fandangos, the whispers of Moorish courts, the clatter of castanets, the distant hum of the countryside. In Paris I studied seriously, and there I met and admired giants — Franz Liszt, whose virtuosity and daring spirit were legendary, and later Claude Debussy, whose colors and impressionistic harmonies were changing the language of music before our eyes. In London, I found encouragement and friendship with Enrique Granados, a fellow Spaniard who shared my dream of raising our national music to the grand stages of Europe.

My own compositions tried to give Spain its full, symphonic voice. Works such as the Suite Española and, above all, my great piano cycle “Iberia” were my love letters to my homeland — each piece a city, a dance, a memory. I wanted the piano to sing with the warmth of a Spanish guitar, to echo the streets of Seville and the plazas of Cádiz, to conjure the light and shadow of my country.

Life was not without struggle. I spent years performing to support my family while yearning to compose. Ill health followed me, yet in those later years I wrote my most daring, harmonically rich works, dreaming of Spain even as I lived abroad.

I passed away in 1909, in the seaside town of Cambo-les-Bains in the French Basque country. My heart, though, remained Spanish to its last beat. If my music speaks to you today, I hope it carries the scent of orange blossoms, the rhythms of flamenco, and the enduring soul of Spain.

Thank you for listening — and for keeping that spirit alive.