Alicia de Larrocha

History will record pianist and composer Alicia de Larrocha - born in Barcelona, Spain on May 23, 1923 - as one of the most important and influential Spanish musicians of all time. Winner of multiple Grammy and Edison Awards, Alicia de Larrocha was a child prodigy who, from the age of three, studied under the gifted Catalan pianist Frank Marshall. She performed her first public concert at the age of six in 1929 when Seville hosted the World's Fair. A year later she began composing her own works and, although she never performed her own compositions in public, she bequeathed them in her will to be made public after her death. Alicia De Larrocha built her reputation as one of the world's foremost concert pianists by performing works by the great Spanish composers such as Manuel de Falla, Enrique Granados, Isaac Albéniz and Federico Mompou. She was famously small in stature being less than five feet tall with commensurately small hands, something of a handicap for a pianist - she overcame this due to having a long fifth finger and a wide reach between her thumb and index finger. Her reputation is based both on her performances and her vast catalog of recordings, which date back to 1954. In 2018, a 41 CD box set, Complete Decca Recordings, which gathers together many of her most beloved releases. At the age of 81, she suffered a fall which broke her hip and the artist never fully recovered from the surgery. She died in hospital in her native Barcelona in 2009 at the age of 86.