Yoram Ish-Hurwitz: piano

Albéniz was a man of contrasts: self-disciplinary and reckless, miserly and extravagant, cerebral and sentimental. In Iberia he attempted to capture the natural flow of ideas in a rational pattern. It is as though the romanticist and classicist in him engaged in a never-ending struggle.
What most stirs the imagination in this respect is that Albéniz seems to have continually intertwined fantasy with reality. His life was surrounded by fantastic tales, put into circulation in no small part by the composer himself. As a 10-year-old boy, for example, he supposedly had run away and crossed the Atlantic as a stowaway on a ship to South America, where he had great success as a piano virtuoso. Furthermore, he always maintained that he had been a student of Franz Liszt.
His biographers, too, were not always able to separate fact from fiction. The role that the wealthy Englishman Francis Money-Coutts played in Albéniz’s life is often criticized. In return for financial security, the composer, like a latter-day Faust, is said to have sold his artistic soul to his benefactor. Those who take the trouble to look deeper into this relationship, however, come to entirely different conclusions; namely, that the two shared a close friendship. When Albéniz, disillusioned after the debacle surrounding his planned opera trilogy, devoted the last years of his life to his magnum opus Iberia, Money-Coutts selflessly made that possible.
In just over two years, a gravely ill Albéniz wrote the 12 nouvelles ‘impressions’, as he called them, alternating between Paris and Nice. In these pieces he seems to have produced an accurate sketch of Spain around the turn of the century. Or was it the nostalgia-driven fantasy of a romantic who yearned for his fatherland, considering the fact that apparently even the authentic-sounding flamenco melodies were made up by the composer? Because of the flamenco elements and the titles of the pieces, Andalusia is often called the source of inspiration for the cycle. The emerging Impressionism of Paris, too, seems to have left its mark on the style, not to mention the Lisztian virtuosity. But the real quality of Iberia lies in the originality with which Albéniz was able to blend these elements and the remarkable power of imagination he demonstrated in the process. These are what set it among the most beautiful pieces of music Spain has ever produced.

Een muzikale schets van Spanje
De Spaanse componist Isaac Albéniz wijdde zijn laatste jaren aan het schrijven van zijn meesterwerk Iberia. In een kleine twee jaar schreef de doodzieke componist deze 12 “impressies,” zoals hij ze zelf noemde. In deze stukken lijkt het alsof hij een schets heeft gemaakt van Spanje rond de eeuwwisseling. Door de titels van de stukken en door het gebruik van flamenco-elementen wordt vaak naar Andalusië gewezen als de bron van inspiratie. Er zijn echter ook invloeden terug te vinden die eerder afkomstig lijken te zijn van het opkomende impressionistische Parijs. Ook een virtuositeit zoals Frans Liszt gebruikte klinkt door in Albéniz' impressies. De originaliteit en de creativiteit waarmee Albéniz deze elementen heeft gecombineerd maken dit stuk een waar meesterwerk.

Op dit album wordt Iberia gebracht door Yoram Ish-Hurwitz, een pianist van Nederlands-Israëlische afkomst. Hij studeerde aan het Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam en aan New York's Julliard School. Hij maakte deze fascinerende interpretatie van Iberia ter ere van Isaac Albéniz' 100e sterfdag.

Der junge niederl�ndische, isarelisch-st�mmige Pianist Yoram Ish-Hurwitz (* 1968) studierte am Sweelinck-Konservatorium in Amsterdam und machte an der ber�hmten New Yorker Julliard School sein Examen bei Gy�rgy S�ndor. Zum 100. Todestag von Isaac Alb�niz (18. Mai 2009) legt er eine faszinierende Neuinterpretation der ersten beiden 'Iberia'-B�cher vor.