Iberia (Albéniz)

It was highly praised by Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, who said: "Iberia is the wonder for the piano; it is perhaps on the highest place among the more brilliant pieces for the king of instruments".

It is considered one of the most challenging works for the piano: "There is really nothing in Isaac Albeniz's Iberia that a good three-handed pianist could not master, given unlimited years of practice and permission to play at half tempo.

The twelve pieces were first performed by the French pianist Blanche Selva, but each book was premiered in a different place and on a different date.

[5][6] Other pianists that have audio recordings of Iberia include Miguel Baselga, Ricardo Requejo, Michel Block, Guillermo González (according to his own critical edition of the score), Marc-André Hamelin, Yvonne Loriod, Marek Jablonski, Artur Pizarro, Jean-François Heisser, Esteban Sánchez, Kotaro Fukuma, and Ángel Sanzo, among many others.

The composer Francisco Guerrero Marín, calling Iberia "the greatest Spanish work in the last hundred years", also made an arrangement of six pieces before his death in 1997.