Ernesto Lecuona: the Chopin of the tropics.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Cuban composer - Includes discography

It could have been an artfully contrived scene from one of the 1940s-era Hollywood films for which he wrote music scores, but in the fascinating, real-life world of Ernesto Lecuona, it was just one more memorable incident that would become part of the legend of the man widely recognized as Cuba's greatest composer.

On a trip to New York City to introduce his compositions to music publisher Edward B. Marks, the always curious native of Havana could not resist sitting down at a piano in the publisher's office and playing a hand-written manuscript he happened to see nearby. Soon, the door to an adjoining room flung open, and the impressed composer of the new work emerged to exclaim, "I just had to see who was playing it. My God, you play it better than I!"

The surprised composer was none other than George Gershwin, the piece the soon-to-be-famous "Rhapsody in Blue," and, in true Hollywood fashion, the chance encounter led to an ongoing friendship between two giants of twentieth-century music whose diverse talents and similar interest in classical, popular, and folk idioms made their careers and contributions to global culture so profound y influential and long lasting.

The occasion of the centennial observance of Lecuona's birth has been accompanied by a flurry of concerts, recordings, essays, and lectures that are providing contemporary audiences with opportunities to explore fully the many facets of Lecuona's remarkable artistry.

Lecuona is known for the enduring melodic beauty of his most famous works and his pioneering role in bringing West Africa-derived rhythms from the barrio to the concert hall, yet the totality of his legacy is nothing less than astounding in its depth and variety. In addition to such revered masterpieces as "Malaguena," "Siboney," "Siempre en mi corazon," and the "Andalucia Suite," from which the popular "The Breeze and I" originates, by some accounts Lecuona produced over 1,000 compositions, including 176 pieces for solo piano, 37 orchestral works, an opera, and 11 zarzuelas (operettas).

His eleven film scores, done in the 1930s and 1940s for such major studios as Warner Brothers and MGM, include the 1942 Academy Award-nominated theme for the movie Always in My Heart and the 1947 hit Carnival in Costa Rica, in which he played an orchestra leader alongside stars Cesar Romero and Celeste Holm. Lecuona was also responsible for the creation of the trend-setting rumba show band that bore his name, the phenomenally...