This splendid seven-disc set marks
Alicia de Larrocha's 2003 retirement from the concert stage after an extraordinary career spanning more than seven decades. To many listeners, she is a peerless performer of Iberian (particularly Spanish and Catalan) music. Indeed, as her rendition of Manuel de Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain demonstrates, this Catalan pianist brilliantly captures the indefinable magic and charm of Iberian music, revealing a timeless richness and depth that lesser artists, conforming to ideas of national style, often miss. It would be a mistake, however, to define
de Larrocha as an "Iberian specialist." As this set demonstrates, her rich repertoire encompasses various traditions and a timespan from the late Baroque to the present, from Bach to Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002). What could be less Iberian than Liszt's brooding (and astonishingly demanding) Sonata in B minor? Yet
de Larrocha's rendition of this work ingeniously breaks the spell of monotony (created by almost obsessive thematic reiterations), restoring Liszt's complex work to its original brilliance by attacking the almost insurmountable technical difficulties not as obstacles but as a means to an end. For
de Larrocha, music is the profound, mysterious stream that is only imperfectly defined by the linear mechanics of quantified time and form. Listening to her impeccable performance of Bach's Italian Concerto, for example, listeners hear (feel?) almost imperceptibly brief bursts energy as she intuitively grasps the overwhelming power locked in the formal edifice of Bach's music. Similarly, her exquisite reading of Haydn's Piano Concerto in D major follows the music's inner impulse underneath the rhythmic surface, translating the composer's inspiration into an extraordinary experience of lightness and breathtaking freedom. Also featured are impressive readings of works by Mozart,
Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn,
Ravel,
Khachaturian,
Mompou, and Beethoven.