Hyperion Records

Albéniz’s association with the Schola Cantorum inspired his most charming work for piano, Yvonne en visite!. It appeared in a collection of pieces for children ‘small and large’ by musicians at the Schola and was published by Édition Mutuelle in Paris, around the same time as Iberia. This delightfully humorous work contains Albéniz’s annotations (in the manner of Erik Satie) describing a visit of the young pianist Yvonne Guidé, who is forced to perform by her mother. Yvonne gets a bad case of nerves and stumbles through her repertoire, while her increasingly unhappy mother threatens her with ten days of Hanon exercises!

from notes by Walter Aaron Clark © 2005