By Erik D. Dyar
[Editor’s note: Unable to attend this concert, I asked Erik Dyar to write a review for PENINSULA REVIEWS. Mr. Dyar, an architect by profession, is also an accomplished pianist who performed a recital in Carmel, California last year.]
Before the advent of recordings, in order to discover musical interpretations that could be directly linked to a composer’s own, one had to seek out interpreters who were part of a lineage connecting them back to the composer. There can be, after all, no more direct connection to Brahms than listening to Artur Rubinstein who was a protégé of Joseph Joachim and very close to the composer himself.
On Sunday night, hearing Alicia de Larrocha playing Granados at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, I had a similar feeling of direct connection to the Spanish master. Ms. De Larrocha can be considered, today, (and has been for many years) the interpreter of Spanish keyboard music, for she does have direct links to several Spanish composers. From the age of five she studied with Frank Marshall, a pupil and close friend of Enrique Granados. After his death, by the terms of his will, she became the director of the conservatory of music bearing his name that he had established in Barcelona. Beyond Granados, she has established definitive interpretations of virtually all the great Spanish keyboard works, not least of which is Albeniz’ Iberia Suite, two selections of which she performed on Sunday night.
