Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 03/27/2007, uploaded on 01/08/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

First Spanish Dance                    Manuel de Falla

After seven years in Paris, and upon the outbreak of World War I, Manuel de Falla returned to Madrid. There, he was commissioned to write a song and dance, which soon evolved into a full-blown story based upon gypsy legend. He emerged with the ballet El amor brujo (literally, Spell-bound Love, but generally anglicized as Love, the Magician).  The emphatic rhythm, compressed tonal range and alternating long notes of the "Dance of Terror" have become famous as orchestral excerpts and piano transcriptions.  The Spanish dance is from the 2nd act of the opera La vida breve, or "the short life". Like El amor brujo, the subject matter deals with love, betrayal and death in a gypsy slum of El Albaicín, Granada.       Milton Rubén Laufer

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.