Decca Classics

• 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
• 120pp perfect bound book:
  1. Introductions from Alicia Torra (daughter) and André Previn
  2. A new essay by Jed Distler: Vitality, Generosity and Joy: The Art of Alicia de Larrocha
  3. An excerpt from new and only available biography of Ms Larrocha by Mònica Pagès
  4. Many unseen photographs and facsimiles from Alicia’s private collection and Decca’s archives

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.. Slight of frame, de Larrocha’s physical stature belied her considerable accomplishments, not least in key corners of the French repertoire and the Russian Romantics where she positively flourished and we marvel at the pianist’s tiny hands effortlessly traversing huge leaps on the keyboard and summoning colossal sonorities that never splinter.

Born in Barcelona on May 23, 1923. Alicia de Larrocha came from a musical family. Both her mother and her aunt were disciples of the composer and pianist Enrique Granados. Alicia began lessons at the age of three with Granados’ student and teaching assistant, Frank Marshall who insisted that his gifted student gain a solid foundation in Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, which, in turn, helped to inform what would become her standard-setting interpretations of Spanish music. She explained in a 1973 Gramophone interview “if you can't play Bach correctly, you can't play Spanish music.”

Her first American recitals in 1954 and 1955 coincided with her first major label recordings, made in New York for American Decca, all reissued as part of the present collection. Though she broached the recording process reluctantly, she nonetheless recorded a large discography and it was her association with British Decca between 1970 and 1988 that was to be her longest and most fruitful major label relationship.