ALBENIZ: Piano Music, Vol. 1

Gonzalez, Guillermo

8.554311-12

"An ideal interpreter of Albeniz's most important piano works, Guillermo Gonzalez is also the world's leading authority on the composer. He is a most impressive pianist, one who illuminates every corner of this complex work and its now angular, now undulating rhythms, together with its lively jotas and percolating polos. Gonzalez, who has also created a performance edition (published by Schott) aimed at future generations of interpreters, brings to the work a majesty that lends compelling depth to its litany of rhapsodic arabesques...This is a reading of Iberia where, given the work's elaborate array of sonorities and the variety of inflections at his command to convey them, Gonzalez proves himself a magical performer. Here, as well as in the delicious El Polo and the passionate El Albaicin, Albeniz's imagery is resplendent. Gonzalez is at ease with this music because he knows it so intimately. This magnificent reading brings him into the realm of Iberia's greatest and most opulent interpreters, Michel Block and Alicia DeLarrocha. That such a rich experience is now available at Naxos' budget price makes it all the more indispensable. • John Bell Young, St. Petersburg Times, April 2001

CD x 2

Naxos

12/2/98

636943431122