Profiles Ernesto Lecuona: From the Caribbean to the World Musical Stage

A prolific Cuban composer, maestro Ernesto Lecuona, the child of a couple of Canary islanders, was born in Guanabacoa in 1896 and died in his parents' homeland in 1963. Considered a world-class musician, he took in all the influence of African and Caribbean beats in his hometown of Guanabacoa, a village pretty near the city of Havana. Later on, he absorbed the best of the Spanish music that composers like Falla and Albeniz were making at the time.

A prodigy of superb talent and sensitivity, Lecuona excelled on the keyboard at the early age of five, when he performed his first concert. He started writing his first works when he was only 12. In 1913, as he graduated from the National Music Conservatory where he came out with a gold medal as the first students of his class, Lecuona cranked up a successful musical career. He's by and large considered the best-known Cuban musician of all time with a catalog of over 600 pieces under his belt, many of them including anthological masterpieces like Siboney, Siempre en mi Corazón, Damisela Encantadora, La Comparsa, Ahi Viene el Chino, Arrullo de Palma, La Malagueña and Danza Lucumi.

Dances, zarzuelas and piano compositions add up seventy in all. His role in discovering and launching some of the most prestigious all-time Cuban singers in Europe and America was paramount. Those artists soon became faithful performers of his compositions. Lecuona was a gifted pianist of exceptional qualities that made huge contributions to Cuba's piano music, especially with the use of certain rhythms. He made concerts in different countries, chiefly all across Europe and the Americas.

Mauricio Cervantes

LECUONA TOCA A LECUONA (Volume I) (Lecuona Plays Lecuona) Ernesto Lecuona EGREM CD-0045

Quite a gift for piano music lovers and for those who keep tabs of Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona's works. This CD culls an excellent selection of anthological pieces played by Lecuona himself. As many critics have long said in the cases of Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninov, Lecuona combined his piano virtuosity with a flair for songwriting and composition that eventually churned out several of the best Cuban dances ever created, a genre that had been commenced by Ignacio Cervantes, “Cuba's most celebrated musician of the 19th century,” as famous Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier once wrote.

The sixteen cuts are La Comparsa; Danza Negra; Danza Lucumi; A la Antigua; En Tres por Cuatro; Canto del Guajiro; La Habanera; Damisela Encantadora; Crisantemo; Romantico; Malagueña; Andalusia; Estas en mi Corazon; Maria la O; Siboney and Noche Azul. Fortunately for those who love his music and for scholars who study his work, maestro Lecuona recorded several LPs that have now evolved into cherished treasures and the underpinnings of this effort that record label EGREM is doing to spread his music.

LECUONA TOCA A LECUONA (Volume II) (Lecuona Plays Lecuona) Ernesto Lecuona EGREM CD-0086

A couple of years after the first volume hit the stores, the same record label (EGREM) is now putting out Lecuona Plays Lecuona (Volume II). A new breed of listeners is increasingly interested in knowing the maestro's piano compositions, and a good deal of pianists from the turf and around the world are putting more and more Lecuona hits in their repertoires, a sign that his musical legacy is alive and kicking. This CD includes 14 cuts: Poetico; Ahi Viene el Chino; Por Que te Vas; Estudiantina; Cordova; Gitanerias; Aragon; Valencia Mora; Al Fin te Vi; Palomitas Blancas; Music box; Mazurca en Glisado; Polichinela and Rosa la China. In all, this is a production of top-flight technical and artistic level in which Lecuona's melodic inspiration and the presence of a rich inheritance are laid bare to the bone.

Here you'll hear the influence of Spanish music, African rhythms and Caribbean beats. Forty one years after his death, the work of Ernesto Lecuona is rooted in Cuba's national heritage more than ever before. His compositions are indispensable to really cotton on to the history of Cuban, Hispanic, American and universal music.