Alicia de Larrocha y de la Calle (23 May 192325 September 2009) was a Spanish pianist and composer. She was considered one of the great piano legends of the 20th century.
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was esta ...
called her "the greatest Spanish pianist in history",
''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' "one of the world's most outstanding pianists",
and ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' "the leading Spanish pianist of her time".
She won multiple
Grammy Awards and a
Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. She is credited with bringing greater popularity to the compositions of
Isaac Albéniz
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual (; 29 May 1860 – 18 May 1909) was a Spanish virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor. He is one of the foremost composers of the Post-Romantic era who also had a significant influence on his conte ...
and
Enrique Granados
Pantaleón Enrique Joaquín Granados y Campiña (27 July 1867 – 24 March 1916), commonly known as Enric Granados in Catalan or Enrique Granados in Spanish, was a composer of classical music, and concert pianist from Catalonia, Spain. ...
.
In 1995, she became the first Spanish artist to win the
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
Prize.
Life and career
Alicia de Larrocha was born in
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
,
Catalonia
Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy.
Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the nort ...
, Spain.
She began studying piano with
Frank Marshall at the age of three. Both her parents were pianists and she was also the niece of pianists.
She gave her first public performance at the age of five at the
International Exposition
A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
in
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
.
She performed her first concert at the age of six at the
World's Fair
A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
in
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...
in 1929, and had her orchestral debut at the age of 11. By 1943, her performances were selling out in Spain.
She began touring internationally in 1947, and in 1954 toured North America with the
Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 1966, she engaged in a first tour of Southern Africa which proved so wildly popular that three further tours were completed In 1969, de Larrocha performed in Boston for the
Peabody Mason Concert
Benefactor
The name Peabody Mason comes from Miss Fanny Peabody Mason, who until her death in 1948 was an active patron of music both in the United States and abroad. Her musical interests were piano, singing and chamber music.
Concert series ...
series.
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," and while she never performed her works in public, she gave her family the choice of making them available after her death, which they have done.
De Larrocha made numerous recordings of the solo piano repertoire and in particular the works of composers of her native Spain. She is best known for her recordings of the music of
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu (, 23 November 187614 November 1946) was an Andalusian Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first ...
,
Enrique Granados
Pantaleón Enrique Joaquín Granados y Campiña (27 July 1867 – 24 March 1916), commonly known as Enric Granados in Catalan or Enrique Granados in Spanish, was a composer of classical music, and concert pianist from Catalonia, Spain. ...
,
Federico Mompou
Frederic Mompou Dencausse (; alternatively Federico Mompou; 16 April 189330 June 1987) was a Spanish and Catalan composer and pianist. He is remembered for his solo piano music and songs.
Life
Early years
Mompou was born in Barcelona to the ...
, and
Isaac Albéniz
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual (; 29 May 1860 – 18 May 1909) was a Spanish virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor. He is one of the foremost composers of the Post-Romantic era who also had a significant influence on his conte ...
, as well as her 1967 recordings of
Antonio Soler
Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language-speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular mal ...
's keyboard sonatas. She recorded for
Hispavox
Hispavox S.A. was a major Spanish record company founded on June 27, 1953, that run independently until 1985 when it was acquired by EMI. Their studios were located in Madrid, and were known among fans as Sonido Torrelaguna. EMI owned the Hispa ...
, CBS/Columbia/Epic, BMG/RCA and London/Decca, winning her first
Grammy Award in 1975 and her last one in
1992, at the age of almost seventy. She received the
Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 1994.
De Larrocha spoke in a 1978 interview with Contemporary Keyboard,
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.
Less than five feet tall and with small hands for a pianist,
spanning an interval of barely a tenth on the keyboard, in her younger years she was nonetheless able to tackle all the big concertos (
all five by
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...
,
Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
's No. 1,
Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...
's
No. 2,
Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one o ...
's Nos. 2 and 3, both of
Ravel's, and those of
Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''., group=n (27 April .S. 15 April1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, p ...
,
Bartók,
Bliss
BLISS is a system programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by W. A. Wulf, D. B. Russell, and A. N. Habermann around 1970. It was perhaps the best known system language until C debuted a few years later. Since then, C b ...
and
Khachaturian, and many more), as well as the wide spans demanded by the music of Granados, Albéniz, and de Falla. She had a "long fifth finger" and a "wide stretch between thumb and index finger" which enhanced her technical ability.
"She made her first recordings, of Chopin, at age 9, her feet not yet able to reach the pedals"
and was considered a great interpreter of Chopin.
As she grew older she began to play a different style of music; more
Mozart and Beethoven were featured in her recitals and she became a regular guest at the "Mostly Mozart Festival" of the
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. In 2001, she was named Honorary Member of the
Foundation for Iberian Music at The City University of New York. De Larrocha retired from public performance in October 2003, aged 80, following a 76-year career.
Alicia de Larrocha died on 25 September 2009 in
Quiron Hospital,
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
, aged 86. She had been in declining health since breaking her hip five years previously.
Her husband, the pianist
Juan Torra, with whom she had two children, had died in 1982.
List of awards and nominations
De Larrocha won several individual awards throughout her lifetime. Her extended discography has been recognized with 14 Grammy nominations (1967, 1971, 1974,1975 (x2), 1977 (x2), 1982 (x2), 1984, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992), of which she won four. She received honorary degrees from universities in
Michigan
Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...
,
Middlebury College, Vermont, and
Carnegie Mellon
Carnegie may refer to:
People
*Carnegie (surname), including a list of people with the name
*Clan Carnegie, a lowland Scottish clan
Institutions Named for Andrew Carnegie
* Carnegie Building (Troy, New York), on the campus of Rensselaer Polyte ...
.
A
crater on the planet Mercury has been named in her honor.
, -
, 1960 , , Albéniz:
''Iberia'' – Books II & III (
Erato Records
Erato Records is a record label founded in 1953 as Disques Erato by Philippe Loury to promote French classical music. Loury was head of éditions musicales Costallat. His first releases in France were licensed from the Haydn Society of Boston, a ...
) , ,
Grand Prix du Disque
Grand may refer to:
People with the name
* Grand (surname)
* Grand L. Bush (born 1955), American actor
* Grand Mixer DXT, American turntablist
* Grand Puba (born 1966), American rapper
Places
* Grand, Oklahoma
* Grand, Vosges, village and co ...
, ,
, -
, 1968 , , Granados: ''
Goyescas
''Goyescas'', Op. 11, subtitled ''Los majos enamorados'' (''The Gallants in Love''), is a piano suite written in 1911 by Spanish composer Enrique Granados. It was inspired by the work of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. The piano pieces have no ...
'' – Book II, ''Escenas románticas'' (
Erato Records
Erato Records is a record label founded in 1953 as Disques Erato by Philippe Loury to promote French classical music. Loury was head of éditions musicales Costallat. His first releases in France were licensed from the Haydn Society of Boston, a ...
) , , Grand Prix du Disque , ,
, -
, 1974 , , Albéniz: ''Iberia'' (
Decca Decca may refer to:
Music
* Decca Records or Decca Music Group, a record label
* Decca Gold, a classical music record label owned by Universal Music Group
* Decca Broadway, a musical theater record label
* Decca Studios, a recording facility in W ...
) , , Grand Prix du Disque , ,
, -
, 1991 , , Granados: ''Goyescas'', ''Allegro De Concierto'', ''Danza Lenta'' (
RCA
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
) , , Grand Prix du Disque , ,
, -
, 1968 , , ? , ,
Edison Award
The Edison Award is an annual Dutch music prize awarded for outstanding achievements in the music industry. It is comparable to the American Grammy Award. The Edison award itself is a bronze replica of a statuette of Thomas Edison, designed b ...
, ,
, -
, 1978 , , ? , , Edison Award , ,
, -
, 1989 , , Albéniz: ''Iberia'' (Decca) , , Edison Award , ,
, -
,
1974 , , Albéniz: ''Iberia'' (Decca) , ,
Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...
, ,
, -
,
1975
It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe.
Events
January
* January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...
, , Ravel:
Concerto For Left Hand and
Concerto For Piano in G; Faure: Fantaisie for piano and orchestra (Decca) , , Grammy Award , ,
, -
,
1988
File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Bicenten ...
, , Albéniz: ''Iberia'', ''Navarra'',
''Suite Española'' (Decca) , , Grammy Award , ,
, -
,
1991
File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phi ...
, , Granados: ''Goyescas'', ''Allegro De Conicerto'', ''Danza Lenta'' (RCA), , Grammy Award , ,
, -
, 1971 , , ? , , Records of the Year (London) , ,
, -
, 1974 , , ? , , Records of the Year (London) , ,
, -
, 1979 , , Granados: ''Goyescas'' (Decca) , , Deutsche Schallplattenpreis (Germany) , ,
, -
, 1980 , ,
Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
:
Piano Sonata in B minor (Decca) , ,
Franz Liszt Award (
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
) , ,
, -
, 1994 , ,
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu (, 23 November 187614 November 1946) was an Andalusian Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first ...
and
Xavier Montsalvatge
Xavier Montsalvatge i Bassols (; 11 March 1912 – 7 May 2002) was a Spanish composer and music critic. He was one of the most influential music figures in Catalan music during the latter half of the 20th century.
Biography
Life
Montsalvatge w ...
: Piano Works (RCA) , ,
Japan Record Academy Award , ,
, -
, 1978 , , — , , Musician of the Year - Musical America (magazine) , ,
, -
, 1988 , , — , , Commander of the
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres , ,
, -
, 1994 , , — , ,
Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts , ,
, -
, 1995 , , — , ,
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
Prize , ,
, -
, 1961 , , — , ,
Paderewski Memorial Medal (London), ,
, -
References
External links
Interviewfrom ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''
iclassicsBarnes and Noble ''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'' obituary
Renowned pianist de Larrocha dies– BBC News obituary
Alicia de Larrocha (1923–2009)– BBC Music Magazine
Alicia de Larrocha: pianist– ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' (UK)
Alicia de Larrocha, Shy Virtuoso– ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''
Some photos, programs and introductions on her four highly successful Southern Africa tours, 1965-75Collection of unpublished magnetic tapes of her live performances
{{DEFAULTSORT:Larrocha, Alicia De
1923 births
2009 deaths
Grammy Award winners
Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Catalan pianists
Musicians from Barcelona
Spanish classical pianists
Spanish women pianists
20th-century classical pianists
20th-century Spanish musicians
Spanish women composers
Women classical pianists
Spanish classical composers
20th-century Spanish women
20th-century women pianists