Thanks to the piano – a truly universal instrument – Debussy, Ravel, Chabrier, and Rimsky-Korsakov not only developed their early compositional voices, but also found a vehicle through which their orchestral masterpieces could be adapted and performed beyond the concert hall. Through their own arrangements or those by trusted collaborators, these works have reached intimate settings and private homes around the world. The keyboard’s orchestral richness – especially in four-hand performance – and its ability to imitate or evoke the timbral variety of an orchestra allow the Lago-Navarro Duo to showcase their artistry and technical command in a beloved and familiar repertoire, deeply ingrained in the collective musical memory of the Spanish people. In this album, Ibéria, Rapsodie espagnole, España, and Capriccio espagnol are brought together in a fresh concert format, allowing the musical echoes of Spain to resound with renewed brilliance.

The well-established Lago-Navarro piano duo – formed in 1997 by Spanish pianists Juan Lago and Belén Navarro – presents in this album a repertoire that has featured prominently in their concerts over the past decade: works by non-Spanish composers inspired by Spanish popular music. This foreign gaze upon Spain takes the form of four renowned orchestral works presented here in four-hand piano arrangements. In the cases of Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol, the composers themselves prepared the four-hand piano versions. Debussy’s Ibéria was transcribed by his friend and collaborator André Caplet, while Emmanuel Chabrier’s España was arranged for four hands by the esteemed opera composer André Messager. Yet it is important to note that most of these works were originally conceived as pieces for two pianos before being orchestrated.