Alicia de Larrocha

Alicia de Larrocha distinguished herself above all through an unmatched commitment to championing piano works from Spain and Catalonia. Her readings of pieces by Albéniz, Granados, Falla, Mompou—who remained a close friend throughout her life and wrote several compositions expressly for her—and Montsalvatge earned consistent praise for their brilliance, authenticity, and command of tonal color, texture, and rhythm. Critics also placed her recordings of Mozart and French Impressionist repertoire among the most respected of their kind.

She launched her professional path with a solo recital before turning six and made her orchestral debut at eleven, playing Mozart’s “Coronation” Concerto, K. 537, alongside the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid. Her teachers included Frank Marshall at the Academia Marshall and Ricardo Lamote de Gignon for music theory. Although her mature career commenced in 1940, she waited until 1947 to undertake her first European tours. In 1953 she gave the premiere of Montsalvatge’s Concierto breve, a score dedicated to her, and traveled to England for the first time. Her initial United States engagement followed in 1955, when she appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Thereafter she performed on every continent, collaborating with Victoria de Los Angeles, Montserrat Caballé, the Guarneri and Tokyo String Quartets, Colin Davis, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Kent Nagano, and Gerard Schwarz. She even joined Francis Poulenc himself at the second piano for his Concerto for Two Pianos. In 1959 she assumed the directorship of the Academia Marshall. Her extensive discography, above all the albums devoted to Albéniz and Granados, accumulated an array of honors that included Grammy Awards, the Edison Prize, the Grand Prix du Disque, and the Deutsche Schallplatten Prize. She received the Paderewski Memorial Medal, the Principe de Asturias prize, and additional distinctions, while the city of Barcelona, the Spanish and French governments, and UNESCO all formally acknowledged her achievements. She maintained an active concert schedule into her eightieth year. A broken hip in 2007 precipitated a broader decline, and she died in 2009.