ALICIA DE LARROCHA

There are many pianists that I admire and for different reasons; some have overcome particular difficulties for their art, some have managed the most difficult music that there is in the repertoire, some have seemed to bring all the music they play to life in so real and glittering a way that the notes on the printed page literally jump out at you. Yet all are different, and all are admired for what they do and have done.

Yet in Alicia de Larrocha we have a phenomenon who is nothing short of amazing. Watching de Larrocha in interview she is always very full of fun and she enjoys what she does, but more than that it is interesting to note her wide repertoire which encompasses some of the most demanding oeuvres in the piano repertory.

Alicia de Larrocha has, interestingly enough, very small hands, and they are trained quite clearly as thoroughly as one could imagine. She has recorded the Rachmaninoff 3rd concerto; and a very competent and impressive job she made of it too.

Yet in the Spanish repertory she has, quite simply, no equal. Her several recorded performances of Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain are among those by which others are judged, but the Spanish repertoire extends far further than that.

Isaac Albeniz wrote four books of three pieces which he called 'Iberia', and these massive impressions of Spain make demands on a pianist which at times surpass those of Liszt. Very few pianists have actually recorded these works, and the recordings by Alicia de Larrocha are, in the view of many critics, simply unsurpassed.

It has been said that, although she retired only a year or so ago from the concert stage, she was one of the most reliable of all pianists, and for her to cancel a concert was the exception rather than the rule...that is certainly not the case with many concert artists.

De Larrocha comes from Barcelona in the heart of Spain, and started to play the piano at a very young age. Apparently she was very tiny and was writing on the keys with a pen, and flicking the keys up, and her aunt locked the piano. She kicked up a rumpus (with quite a Spanish flavour no doubt) and her aunt agreed that she should learn the piano, so from the age of three she was a student of Frank Marshall. Her aunt had, interestingly enough been a pupil of Granados.

Perhaps it is when we hear of a pianist such as de Larrocha that it seems that small hands cannot really be an excuse for steering clear of any part of the repertoire... Carnaval, Gaspard de la Nuit, the Liszt Sonata, her recorded legacy is extensive, and so, apparently, is her keen work on her piano technique which has included stretching exercises where she uses one hand to stretch the fingers of the other on the keyboard. It obviously works!