(Born May 23, 1923 in Barcelona, Spain; died there on September 25, 2009)
Alicia de Larrocha is universally recognized as having been one of the finest pianists of the 20th century. Her extraordinary musical abilities emerged at a young age. She requested piano lessons when she was 3, and by the age of 5, debuted at the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona; at six, she performed her first concert at the World's Fair in Seville. She made her first Chopin recordings when she was 9, when her feet could not yet reach the pedals. She played her orchestral debut in Madrid when she was eleven. Less than five feet tall and with small hands for a pianist, (she barely could span an interval of a tenth on the keyboard), she nonetheless played all five Beethoven concertos, as well as ones by Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff and others. She was reported to have had a “long fifth finger” and a “wide stretch between thumb and index finger,” which enhanced her technical ability. In 1954, she toured North America with the L.A. Philharmonic. Over time, she won four Grammy awards.
Few people think of de Larrocha as a composer. Sueño Infantil, Minúé Triste, and Impromptu are delicate piano miniatures she wrote for herself during her youth. De Larrocha, writes Jed Distler, “started composing at age seven and continued on and off until her 30th year, with a prolific spurt in her late teens.” Altogether, there are about forty works that we know to be hers. Because she was very modest, de Larrocha hid her compositions for most of her life, having decided that they were mere “sins of youth” (Pecados de Juventud). Although she never performed her works in public, she allowed her family to make them available after her death.
In a 1978 interview with Contemporary Keyboard, de Larrocha commented, “I don't believe there is a ‘best’ of anything in this life. I would say, though, that Granados was one of the great Spanish composers, and that, in my opinion, he was the only one that captured the real Romantic flavor. His style was aristocratic, elegant and poetic -- completely different from Falla and Albéniz. To me, each of them is a different world. Falla was the one who really captured the spirit of the Gypsy music. And Albéniz, I think was more international than the others. Even though his music is Spanish in flavor, his style is completely Impressionistic.”
Sueño infantil (“Childhood Dream”) is intimate, gentle and like a lullaby. The impressionistic miniature is about two minutes long and has a floating melody over a soft, rhythmic accompaniment. It carries echoes of the serenity that de Larrocha admired in the piano works of her friend, Federico Mompou.
Minúé triste (“Sad Minuet”) is very brief (less than a minute long), but, nevertheless, an evocative piece, composed on April 7, 1943, when de Larrocha was nineteen. It is poignant, but although nominally a minuet and uses the standard triple meter associated with the form, de Larrocha gives the piece a sense of Spanish romanticism and melancholy, even nostalgia by including rich late-Romantic harmonies. Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, and Enrique Granados, composers she loved, can be felt in her bittersweet thematic lines. With subtle dynamics and emotional restraint, she creates a memorable, sad, intimate, and strikingly introspective miniature.