Ian Pace (Piano): Iberia

Ian Pace, Professor of Music, Culture and Society at City St George’s, presents a characteristically rich recital centred around Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz’s cycle of twelve pieces for piano, Iberia (1905-09), alongside works by Mompou, Stravinsky and Busoni.

Please note the early start time of this event: 6:30pm.

Admission

General admission: £5 - please sign up to attend here.
City students, staff, unwaged and concessions: Free admission - please sign up to attend here.

Programme:

• Federico Mompou, Trois Variations (1921)
• Igor Stravinsky-Arthur Lourié, Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920, arranged 1927)
• Ferruccio Busoni, Kammer-Fantasie über Carmen, BV 284, “Sonatina No. 6” (1920)
• Isaac Albéniz, Ibéria (complete) (1905-09)

About this event

Drawing upon Spanish regional dances, songs and evocations of the landscape, Albéniz’s Iberia features some of the richest and most colourful writing for the instrument in the repertory, and was greatly admired by Oliier Messiaen. Fandangos, jotas, zapateados, saetas, cante jondos, tarantellas and more are all configured through dense and highly virtuosic pianistic figuration; guitars, bells, mournful and exuberant voices are all conjured up from the keyboard. Albéniz creates an unmistakeable world suffused with heat, ritual, memory and street life, both unmistakeably regional and deeply cosmopolitan. The rest of the programme includes a melancholy set of variations by Catalan composer Federico Mompou, a rare chance to hear the piano arrangement by futurist composer Arthur Lourié of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, and Busoni’s unforgettable fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen, in which dances, songs and festivities are gradually dissolved towards a fateful climax.