Spanish pianist Alicia De Larrocha has died. When I was about ten, I recieved a CD of Romantic classics. Totally cheezy album art (it was called Dreams of Love: The Ultimate Romantic Piano Collection) and packaging, but it was really good for me at the time. It was my first exposure to some of the biggest solo piano standards of that period, and definitely reinforced my love for rubato and the pedal-heavy virtuosity of that literature.
One of the tracks was Alicia De Larrocha playing one of Grieg’s Lyrics Pieces. I remember imagining what she might look at. Alicia De Larrocha is one of the greatest names ever; it is stacatto in the given name and a precipitando in the double r building toward a climax. I imagined that she was thin, with dark hair and an inscrutable expression that spoke to the depth of emotion that she accessed to play her music.
Of course, De Larrocha was a short woman that looks like she could be a cool granny. But still I feel like we have a connection, and I am sorry to hear that she has passed.