Nights In The Gardens Of Spain

This was Alicia de Larrocha’s finest account of Nights in the Gardens of Spain, fully capturing the Andalusian atmosphere of this evocative score. After all, it’s not a work about landscapes and flowers – it’s about love. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos does a superb job of drawing perfume and color out of an English orchestra.

The music of Ravel is especially close to Alexandre Tharaud’s heart. Now, in partnership with the Orchestre National de France and conductor Louis Langrée, he has recorded both the composer’s piano concertos, pairing them with Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain), Manuel de Falla’s sumptuous work for piano and orchestra. “Ravel’s Concerto in G major is fresh and Mozartian in its colours, while his Concerto for the Left Hand is haunted by dark shades and suppressed fears,” says Tharaud. Both concertos were premiered in 1932. “Characteristically for Ravel, they are simultaneously unique and alike.

Martha Argerich’s Ravel G major was for so long a reference recording that it’s easy to forget how idiosyncratic it actually is. I wouldn’t actually blame anyone who found it too garish in its colouring, with its volatility giving diminishing returns and its rubato too predictably appassionato for a sensibility as dapper as Ravel’s. Such a person might well find exactly what they want in Steven Osborne’s account, which is masterful in its own way but essentially self-effacing.

Alicia De Larrocha - The Art of Alicia De Larrocha (2003) {7CD Box Set Decca 473 813-2}
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© 2003 Decca Music | 473 813-2
Classical / Piano / Orchestral

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).