May 23rd: centenary of the great pianist Alicia de Larrocha. Here is a live recording made in New York’s Hunter College in November 1971 with Larrocha’s close friend and the other great figure of Spanish classical music of 20th-century, Victoria de los Ángeles. A perfect communion between two artists at the height of their powers in a beautiful program including songs by Falla, Granados, and excerpts of zarzuelas.

This was Alicia de Larrocha’s finest account of Nights in the Gardens of Spain, fully capturing the Andalusian atmosphere of this evocative score. After all, it’s not a work about landscapes and flowers – it’s about love. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos does a superb job of drawing perfume and color out of an English orchestra.

This 8 CD set includes all the recordings of solo Spanish piano music she made for the Spanish company Hispavox in the 1950s and 60s, as well as a live recording of a concert with the Spanish soprano Victoria de los Angeles in 1971 and a concerto by Montsalvatge made in 1992.

A truly beautiful and unique tracklist with rarities including Víkingur Ólafsson’s new arrangement for piano of a Bach Cantata, rare transcriptions for guitar, for mandolin and even String Quartet; alongside familiar Bach masterpieces, all played by the world’s greatest classical artists, curated and presented Deutsche Grammophon.

Alicia de Larrocha has been playing these works, the greatest in the repertoire of Spanish piano music, all her life – one of her very first recordings, 40 years ago, was of some of the Goyescas, and I had the pleasure of welcoming her first Iberia ten years after that (10/65); and immersed as she was from her earliest childhood in the authentic tradition (her mother, her aunt and she herself were all trained at Granados’s own school, of which she later became director), she has several times been asked to re-record them. She once said, rather wistfully, that she didn’t consider herself a specialist but that Spanish music was what the public constantly demanded of her. One can sympathize with her if she feels inescapably cast in this mould – but then she shouldn’t be so wonderfully persuasive in it! She employs plenty of subtle rubato but possesses the ability to make it sound as natural as breathing; yet she can also preserve a stimulating tautness of rhythm.

In an edition of several releases on Eloquence devoted to the artistry of the great Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha’s Decca recordings comes the first release on CD of her recording, with David Zinman, of Mozart’s delectable A major Concerto KV 414. Coupled exactly as per the original LP (SXL 6952), this release offers up Larrocha’s subtlety of phrasing and nimble fingerwork in the Bach and Haydn Concertos. The ‘gypsy’ finale of the latter is something she clearly relishes.

Celebrated for her glorious traversals of 19th and 20th-century Spanish piano repertoire, on this recording Alicia de Larrocha harks back to the Baroque, offering a selection of sonatas by Scarlatti as well as the much lesser-known ones of his contemporary (and her compatriot) Soler. Sandwiched between, is her recording of the fifth of Handel’s keyboard suites with its celebrated ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’ variations. This issue forms part of a survey of Larrocha’s celebrated Decca recordings with some of them (on this issue, the Scarlatti sonatas Kk. 8 and 10) appearing on CD for the first time. Six of the Soler sonatas appear from Larrocha’s Scarlatti/Soler recording with a further two (tracks 18 and 19) from a recital of Spanish encores.

Limited Edition 41-CDs set presenting Alicia de Larrocha’s complete Decca & American Decca recordings.
Including previously unreleased recordings of Grieg and Albéniz. Includes discs of bonus material: 2 CDs of de Larrocha’s early Hispavox (EMI/Warner) Madrid recordings of piano encores. Includes recordings with Pilar Lorengar, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, André Previn, Sir Georg Solti, Riccardo Chailly, Zubin Mehta and David Zinman. Greatly respected by her peers, not least Arthur Rubinstein, Gina Bachauer, Van Cliburn, Claudio Arrau and Vladimir Horowitz, if you wanted to witness a Who’s Who of New York City-based keyboard luminaries gathered in one place, you simply had to purchase a ticket for an Alicia de Larrocha recital..