Alicia's Will Poem by gershon hepner

What makes things happen is your will,
and when it doesn’t you
have let your will become so ill
you can’t help it to do
the sort of things a will is trained
to do. In Barcelona
Alicia learned this, and disdained
to be less than its owner,
a great example for the shy,
who have to know that all
with this amicus curiae
need never fear to fall.

Stuart Isacoff writes about Alicia de Larrocha in the WSJ, October 7,2009 (“Alicia de Larrocha, Shy Virtuoso”) :
When Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha passed away on Sept.25 at the age of 86, it signaled the closing of an era. Ms. de Larrocha can be counted among the last representatives of a golden age of pianism, when poetry reigned and force of personality meant something other than showy display. She was incontestably one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century—with a glowing, intense tone, an infallible sense of rhythm, and an ability to bring out the individual character of any work with utter naturalness—and also one of the least demonstrative. This was partly a matter of shyness. She dreaded public attention. 'Her talent was discovered early on—her first recital was at the age of 5—and she never went to school with other children, ' explains her close friend Mònica Pagès in a phone call from Barcelona, 'so she had difficulty making social contact. Her late husband, pianist Juan Torra, was the only person who could help her deal with the outside world.' He died in 1982, after which Ms. de Larrocha, in the traditional Spanish manner, spent a very long period in mourning….
She seemed to know what she wanted from the start. Born in Barcelona on May 23,1923, Ms. de Larrocha began playing the piano by ear at the age of 2½. Her aunt, a piano teacher, had studied with Granados (he would visit the house, teach, and then take a nap, and years later young Alicia delighted in the fact that she slept on the very bed Granados had used for resting) . When her aunt tried to curtail her obsessive tinkering at the keys, she rebelled. 'I cried, ' she remembered. 'I put my head on the floor and banged it so hard that blood began to flow out, and at this moment my aunt said, 'Well, we'll start.' So we went to Frank Marshall [Granados's pupil, who had taken over the composer's piano academy after his death], and I screamed at him, 'I want to play the piano! '—and he told me to come back the next day.' While still in her teens, she became Marshall's assistant. Eventually, she took over leadership of the academy, though as a teacher her reputation was frightening. 'She demanded so much—it was hard for young students, and many of them were reduced to tears, ' recalls Ms. Pagès. 'She particularly detested it when she saw someone who was pleased with himself, since she was never satisfied.' But for those who had the inner strength to persist, there were rewards. 'When I got my grant to go to Barcelona, ' remembers Mr. Riva, who had first studied in New York at the Juilliard School, 'I met the Granados family and became a student at the academy. I knew that I owed Alicia a debt of gratitude, since she was the power behind the scenes. So when I returned to this country, I took the opportunity to visit her backstage at a Mostly Mozart performance in order to express my thanks. Her manager tried to keep me away, but she pushed him aside, grasped my hands and looked straight into my eyes as I spoke. 'No, ' she said forcefully. 'It was your will that made it happen.'' Nothing sums up her life's journey so much as that one poignant moment.

10/7/09