12 Danzas Españolas

Twelve dances published around 1890, the work that first made Granados's name. Each draws on the rhythms and modes of a Spanish regional style, filtered through the salon idiom of the period. The fifth, Andaluza, became by far the most famous and is heard as often on guitar as on piano, a common fate for Spanish nationalist piano music, which frequently imitates guitar textures so closely that transcription feels like a homecoming.