ISAAC ALBÉNIZ

Laura Lootens, a winner of the Andrés Segovia Competition in Spain, performs here her own arrangement of the original piano work of Asturias from the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz’s Suite Española. 

The work is a homage to well-known regions and towns of Albéniz’s home country. Written in a Romantic, national style, it features typical dance rhythms of its corresponding locality Asturias. 

Born in 1860, Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz was mainly a pianist and wrote primarily for the piano. More than any other musician, he succeeded in incorporating the Spanish guitar idiom and folklore into his style. Thus, for instance, his works contain allusions to rasgueado, a guitar technique that strums all six strings percussively in rapid succession, as we often hear in flamenco. So it is no wonder that many of Albéniz’s piano works have also been performed on the guitar: particularly Asturias (from the Suite Española).