Iberia is a suite for piano composed between 1905 and 1909 by the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz. It is composed offour books of three pieces each; a complete performance lasts about 90 minutes. It is Albéniz's best-known work and considered his masterpiece. It was highly praised by Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, who said: "Iberia is the wonder for the piano; it is perhaps on the highest place among the more brilliant pieces for the king of instruments". Stylistically, this suite falls squarely in the school of Impressionism, especially in its musical evocations of Spain. It is considered one of the most challenging works for the piano: "There is really nothing in Isaac Albeniz's Iberia that a good three-handed pianist could not master, given unlimited years of practice and permission to play at half tempo. But there are few pianists thus endowed."
Composition
Book 1
Dedicated to Ernest Chausson's wife.
Evocación, an impressionist reminiscence of Albéniz's native country, combining elements of the southern Spanish fandango and the northern Spanish jota song forms. The rarely seen seven-flat key signature is itself part of the Evocación.
Fête-dieu à Seville , describing the Corpus Christi Day procession in Seville, during which the Corpus Christi is carried through the streets accompanied by marching bands. Musically, this piece consists of a processional march that eventually becomes overwhelmed by a mournful saeta, the melody evoking Andalusian cante jondo and the accompaniment evoking flamenco guitars. The march and saeta alternate ever more loudly until the main march theme is restated as a lively tarantella that ends abruptly with a flamboyant fffff climactic chord; the piece concludes with a gentle coda again evoking flamenco guitars along with distant church bells.
Book 2
Rondeña, after the Andalusian town of Ronda. A variant of the fandango, it is characterized by the alternation of measures of and.
Almería, relating to the Andalusian seaport of Almería, is loosely based on tarantas, a flamenco form characteristic of the region of Almería.
The twelve pieces were first performed by the French pianist Blanche Selva, but each book was premiered in a different place and on a different date. Three of the performances were in Paris, the other being in a small town in the south of France.
and Carlos Surinach each arranged pieces from Iberia for full orchestra. There is an orchestral arrangement of the Fête-dieu à Seville by Leopold Stokowski, from the mid-1920s, which he recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1928. More recently, Peter Breiner arranged the whole work for full orchestra. The composer Francisco Guerrero Marín, calling Iberia "the greatest Spanish work in the last hundred years", also made an arrangement of six pieces before his death in 1997. A version for three guitars was made by Christophe Dejour and recorded by Trio Campanella. A two-guitar overdubbing version has been released by French guitarist Jean-Marc Zvellenreuther. An invitation to Ravel to orchestrate six pieces from Iberia was the genesis of that composer's Boléro.
