DAISY BADGER (pianoforte)
Percy Fletcher was one of those active musicians who do the real work that no:sier people shout about and get the credit for. Fletcher was a clever composer of the best type of popular music, a man of experience in eveiy department of the profession and one who knew every inch of the theatre from the box-office to the stage-door-for years he was musical director of His Majesty's Theatre. Besides the music he composed for the theatre, he produced a quantity of cleverly-written, very tuneful and extremely popular light music. He ranked among the half-dozen or so British musicians who did this sort of thing extremely well.
Isaac Albeniz began his career as an infant prodigy pianist, and throughout his life devoted himself almost entirely to the piano as a composer and a performer. After studying in Madrid, Brussels, and Leipzig, he toured Europe and America with Rubinstein, and at the age of twenty he returned to Spain and settled down as a teacher. After a short time, however, he threw up teaching and divided the remainder of his short life-he was only forty-nine when he died in 1909—between various activities in Paris and London.
He turned his hand to operas, light and serious, but though several of his works enjoyed temporary success, none of them survived. It is by his voluminous works for pianoforte, particularly those which embody the real essence of his own native music, that he will be best remembered. Many of his pieces are dance tunes in the Spanish idiom.