Pantaleón Enrique Joaquín Granados Campiña (July 27, 1867 – March 24, 1916), commonly known as Enrique Granados in Spanish or Enric Granados in Catalan, was a Spanish classical music composer and concert pianist from Catalonia, Spain. His best-known works include Goyescas, the Spanish Dances, and María del Carmen.
As a young man, he studied piano in Barcelona, where Francisco Jurnet and Joan Baptista Pujol were among his teachers. In 1887, he went to Paris to study. Although he was unable to become a student at the Paris Conservatory, he received private lessons from a professor at the conservatory, Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, whose mother, the soprano Maria Malibran, was of Spanish descent. Bériot placed great emphasis on extremely refined tone production, which greatly influenced Granados’s pedal technique. He also encouraged Granados’ improvisational skills. Equally important were his studies with Felip Pedrell. In 1889, he returned to Barcelona. He achieved his first successes in the late 1890s with the opera María del Carmen, which attracted the attention of King Alfonso XIII.
In 1903, Granados entered a competition organized by Tomás Bretón of the Royal Conservatory in Madrid, which offered a substantial prize of 500 pesetas for the best “concert allegro” for solo piano. Granados submitted his Allegro de concierto, Op. 46, for which the jury declared him the winner by an almost unanimous vote. The victory brought Granados national attention.
In 1911, Granados premiered his piano suite Goyescas, which became his most famous work. It is a collection of six pieces based on paintings by Francisco Goya. The success of this work was so great that he was encouraged to expand it. In 1914, he wrote an opera on the same theme, but the outbreak of World War I forced him to cancel the European premiere. It premiered in New York City on January 28, 1916, to great acclaim. Shortly thereafter, he was invited to give a piano concert for President Woodrow Wilson. Before leaving New York, Granados also made live recordings for the “Duo-Art” system of the New York-based Aeolian Company, all of which have been preserved and can still be heard today – his last recordings.
Many of his works have also been transcribed for guitar and are part of the standard repertoire for guitarists. Outstanding guitar recordings of his works include those by Andrés Segovia, Narciso Yepes, Julian Bream, John Williams, Pepe Romero, Christopher Parkening, Manuel Barrueco, and David Russell.
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