ENRIQUE GRANADOS (1867-1916)
Spanish pianist and composer

Enrique Granados was both composer and pianist.  His place as one of Spain's greatest composers is indisputable.  But few are familiar with his keyboard prowess.  As the recordings offered here below will show, he was equipped with a formidable technique.  His way with his own music holds interpretive surprises and delights, but it is his performances of the Scarlatti sonata that put him in a new light as a pianist.  Would that there were more examples of his art as a pianist.

Granados was on his way home from a successful visit to The United States in 1916 where his opera "Goyescas" received its first performance in New York City, and where he was invited by Woodrow Wilson to  give a recital, presumably at the White House. As a result of this recital, he missed his scheduled ship back to Spain.  He was obliged to seek passage on a vessel to England where he would take a ferry across the Channel to France.  The ferry was sunk by a German U-boat and he drowned trying to save his wife.  The immensity of this tragedy strikes me every time I play his music for which a special place is reserved in my heart.

In addition to the importance of his music to Spain's cultural history, Enrique Granados is considered to have been a major influence on a least two more of Spain's greatest musicians, the composer Manuel de Falla and the legendary cellist Pablo Casals.

Follow this link if you wish to hear a variety of interpretations of the Spanish Dances, Op 37.

from 12 danzas españolas (1890)

2 "Oriental"

Welte Mignon piano roll