Moritz Moszkowski

Moritz Moszkowski was born in Breslau, Prussia in 1854. He settled in Berlin where he earned his livingteaching piano. Over time he became an accomplished concert pianist as well as a teacher. This gave him theopportunity to tour Europe, both as a pianist and occasionally as a conductor. During this time he alsocomposed, where he found some success with light works for both piano and orchestra.Moszkowski’s most well-known and enduring pieces are the Spanish Dances, Opus 12, composd as pianoduets and later arranged by Moszkowski for solo piano in order to meet the demand for the music. Thesedances were inspired by Spanish rhythms and sounds, a theme that was popular during the 19th Century asevidenced in the works of Bizet, Rimsky-Korsakov and Chabrier, to mention just a few.When I first considered transcribing the Spanish Dances for an instrument other than the piano, I really had toweigh the benefits of re-orchestrating the work. I was struck by the strong melodic writing in these dances,which I thouht would work nicely for flute. I also felt that the the guitar could add a sense of the Spanish flairwith not only the obvious Spanish “connection” of the guitar, but also with being able to use things likerasgueado and muted (étouffé) styles of playing. I felt that these would far outweigh the loss of the pianisticeffects (big chords, double octave melodies, etc. ) These pieces are fun to play and will be a nice addition tothe flute/guitar repertoire. I hope you enjoy playing them as much as my duet partner and I have.