Enrique Granados Campiña (July 27, 1867 – March 24, 1916) was a Spanish composer and pianist. He studied piano in Barcelona, and moved to Paris in 1887. Unable to get in to the Paris Conservatory, he ended up taking private lessons with a Conservatory professor, Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot.

Granados' output comprised of chamber music, songs, an orchestral tone poem, zarzuelas, and several works for piano, including  A la Cubana. While a short work in two sections (only around four minutes) and not his most well-known, it was important to Granados, as he presented it to the publisher Schirmer in 1913, along with a few other works. Though he'd never been to Cuba, music from the country made an impact on him (his mother lived in Cuba for a while, and he had a brother born there as well.)

Starting in E-flat major, the work is comprised of rising and falling triplet eighth note figures with grace notes, completely unhurried and relaxed. The next section is in the relative minor of c, and is very short (only 16 bars). The sixteenth notes in the right hand are juxtaposed by the triplet sixteenth in the left, before moving on to a very short chromatic sixteenth note section; it soon returns to, and ends on, the original material from the beginning of the work.

Here's a recording of this work for you to enjoy!

Thomas Rajna