Iberia - Albeniz

[tuochoks]

Hi guys,

does someone have experience with playing (parts of) the Iberia Suite by Albeniz? Did you find it hard or was it pretty ok after deciphering the text? And could you rank the pieces by difficulty?

Evocación
El puerto
El Corpus en Sevilla

Rondeña
Almería
Triana

Al Albaicín
El Polo
Lavapiés

Málaga
Jerez
Eritaña

Thanks!

[retrouvailles]

You can't really rank them by difficulty. Each one has a good number of difficulties, both musical and technical ones. You need to try them out for yourself. Some of my favorites are Evocación, El Albaicín, and Lavapiés.

[tuochoks]

Ok, so let me put it this way:

which one is harder and why:
-
El Corpus en Seville
-
Triana
-

Greets

[tompilk]

triana is the more famous one for being hard, but I like el porto best. Is this playable? it doesn't seem as hard as some of the others...

[cmg]

Guide to "Iberia":

All 12 pieces are challenging, in their own ways.  The basic harmonies are simple but ornamentation and elaborate figuration often create technical hurdles.

This is quite arbitrary, but here's a listing from easiest to hardest:

Evocation:  not hard.  requires a refined legato.

Almeria:  moderately difficult. Long opening part over a repeating tonic bass; gorgeous middle section.  Demands good tone production and cantabile.

El Puerto:  very fine piece of more than moderate difficulty.  Requires good rhythm and above-average keyboard facility.  Harder than hell to memorize (for me, that is).  Note redistribution, as in most of the pieces, is required.

El Polo:  rhythmic monotony requires sopisticated tonal variety to carry this off.  Otherwise, not especially difficult.

Jerez:  longest of the set with complicated elaboration in the accompaniment.  Far from easy.

Navarra:  never played it, but looking at the score you can see less complication in the keyboard writing.  Big climax in central section would require good tone production and a nice big fat sound.

Rondena:  hard to interpret in switching bars of 6/8 and 3/4 time.  Melodic line is hard to unravel from the complex surrounding texture -- typical of almost all of these pieces, by the way.

Malaga:  pretty difficult with its complex accompaniment figurations.

El Albaicin:  spectacular piece, and I think one the most successful of the set.  Requires mature musicianship to pull if off.   Much cantabile writing with very complicated accompaniment figuration.

Triana:  another gem.  Made very hard by rapid keyboard position shifts.  Good rhythmic sense needed.  You'll have to redistribute many notes to avoid the tricky position shifts.  A piece for a mature pianist.

Eritana:  rhythmically similar to Triana.  But complicated by a thicker texture and less variety than Triana.  Difficult to pull off.

Lavapies:  hard and complicated.  Lots of emphasis on inner notes in the complicated texture.  You need endurance and a powerful technique, especially in those rapid staccato chords.  Quite a handful. 

Fete-Dieu a Seville:  yet another gem and extremely demanding.  Contains orchestral effects that are very hard to pull off.  Mature musicianshp and technique definitely required.

[soliloquy]

I'd have to disagree with cmg.  I personally think that El Corpus Christi en Sevilla is actually one of the few very straight-forward pieces of this set.  There are some tricky passages in the right hand, but they are pretty static.  I would say Lavapies is the one that I hear utterly ruined the most-often; probably the most musically challenging due to very difficult voicing.  I would say technically Triana lives up to its reputation, mostly due to its unrelenting nature and the hand-locking.  Rarely is it performed at tempo.

[cmg]

I think we actually agree.  Corpus Christi is, as you noted "straight-forward," but the quasi-orchestral effects that Albeniz requires are, pianistically speaking, difficult for any but very talented pianists to pull off.  The effects are spectacular, but not innately pianistic.  The piece takes an enormous amount of work.  Few are able to perform it effectively.

Lavapies is a terror.  We agree there!

Triana is a major masterpiece.  Only the best should tackle it in recital.

[ahinton]

I'd have to disagree with cmg.  I personally think that El Corpus Christi en Sevilla is actually one of the few very straight-forward pieces of this set.  There are some tricky passages in the right hand, but they are pretty static.  I would say Lavapies is the one that I hear utterly ruined the most-often; probably the most musically challenging due to very difficult voicing.  I would say technically Triana lives up to its reputation, mostly due to its unrelenting nature and the hand-locking.  Rarely is it performed at tempo.

And if it isn't utter sacrilege to say so (and I daresay it is, but I'll risk wrath by doing it anyway), I rather think that the Godowsky version of Triana is superior to the original (and somewhat easier to bring off successfully, its considerably more notes per square centimetre notwithstanding) - and I say this as one who admires Iberia immensely...

Best,

Alistair

[mephisto]

And if it isn't utter sacrilege to say so (and I daresay it is, but I'll risk wrath by doing it anyway), I rather think that the Godowsky version of Triana is superior to the original (and somewhat easier to bring off successfully, its considerably more notes per square centimetre notwithstanding) - and I say this as one who admires Iberia immensely...

Best,

Alistair

I must dissagree. I find the original much more impressive.

Bolet seams to have played a version where he plays the Godowsky version in some places and the original in others. It's effective.

[tuochoks]

tnx guys!

i am working on triana now (corpus just scares my little hands too much), and maybe I'll do evocation, el puerto and almeria as a set (gotta check out almeria)

[maxy]

I am no Albeniz specialist, but Lavapies scares me the most.