His teachers there were Gevaert for composition and Brassin for piano. In 1877 he returned to Spain and was able to obtain financial aid from Count Guillermo Morphy, private secretary to King Alfonso XII, to continue his studies at the Brussels Conservatory. After a stay in San Francisco, he returned to Europe in 1873, going first to Liverpool and London and then to Leipzig, where he studied with Jadassohn and Reinecke. One of his money-making tricks was to turn his back to the piano and to play with the backs of his fingers. Having spent all his money, he supported himself there as a porter and by playing in dockside bars. Although the father attempted to persuade his son to return to the family, young Albéniz asserted his independence and left for New York. There he met his father, who, by a strange coincidence, had been transferred to Havana as a customs inspector. After a successful tour of South America that earned him good money, he went to Cuba. In Buenos Aires he led a beggar's life until he received help in arranging some concerts.
This time he played concerts in Andalusia in the south of Spain and, in Cádiz, embarked as a stowaway on a steamship headed for South America. Being robbed on the road on this first adventure did not deter him from running away again in 1872 after a short return to his parents' home. In 1870, at the age of ten, he ran away from home and gave concerts in various cities of northern Spain. In 1869 the family moved to Madrid, where Albéniz enrolled at the Conservatory and studied with Mendizábal. On his return to Spain in 1868 he went on a concert tour of Catalonia with his father and was hailed as a child wonder. She tried to have him admitted as a student there, but, although he did brilliantly on his entrance examinations, the jury felt he was too young. When he was six his mother took him to Paris, where he took lessons from Antoine Marmontel, professor of piano at the Conservatoire. An extraordinarily precocious child, he made his debut as a pianist in Barcelona at the age of four.
Isaac Albéniz was born in Camprodón, in the province of Gerona, on May 29, 1860.