Isaac Albeniz: 26 Pieces Arranged for Guitar

The good. These Albeniz piano pieces are standards in the classical guitar repertoire. Stanley Yates' arrangements strive to remain faithful to Albeniz's intentions and to maintain accessibility for classical guitarists. He succeeds famously. His arrangment of Sevilla (for example) is lovely and--because he chooses to keep the main motive in the first position rather than the more common 12th--it's much more accessible than many needlessly more difficult arrangements. His take on the workhorse Asturias/Leyenda is similarly helpful. He provides good LH fingerings as well as peformance notes that include the reassuring observation that the rapid fire i-m droning was Segovia's invention and NOT Albeniz's. Along with this insightful comment, he offers alternative realizations of several passages. These aren't pieces for beginners, but it's exactly this kind of help that makes them accessible for us mere mortals. Thanks, Maestro.The bad. The printing and binding are a mess. The first 18 measures of Asturias simply didn't get printed--something else is on the front of that page. (Thankfully, the beginning is esssentially the same as a later section ... I think.) Several other pieces suffered a similar fate--there are pages out of order and (worse) missing. Since the pieces I wanted--Sevilla, Malaguena and Tango--are intact, I won't return it, but how disappointing that Mel Bay would have done such a sloppy job with the printing.

What can one say about sheet music? This sheet music is sufficiently large as to be easily legible, with no unnecessary markings. It is well bound. Just what I expected. Generally, I am not sufficiently familiar with the various songs as to comment on the authenticity of specific arrangements.

Good quality. interesting history of albeniz. all the pieces I like--I just need to get busy...

I recently bought the digital version of these transcriptions, hoping to dive into it sooner and not having to wait for the hard copy to come to me in the mail. I ordered the digital version only to discover that the music looks to be image files and there’s NO WAY TO INCREASE THE MUSIC so that I can actually see it to play it!!This is unsconscionable to me. I don’t understand how this could even be a thing. The image is so small, I had to take a screen shot and then increase that so I could read the music. I challenge anyone at Amazon to try it.

I don't want to sound like I am blowing my own trumpet but I had to research guitar transcriptions of Albeniz's music for my undergrad. What surprised me was the liberties some trasposers took with putting this music to guitar. Of the few pieces I looked at in this edition Stanley has ,in places, left out harmonic tones/chords-leaving maybe just a melody and bass note, changed harmonies, excluded melodic notes, and changed rhythm. Stanley speaks of 'fidelity to piano originals' yet he has omitted and altered quite a lot of passages for (and I'm presuming here) the sake of making them easier to play, which given his academic approach is not very scholarly. There are parts of some of these pieces that have been omitted and, while being slightly trickier, are very easily playable on the guitar.