

NOT JUST
PIANO
MUSIC
It is too often forgotten that Manuel de Falla initially intended to
be a pianist. His first teachers, in Cádiz, had difficulty in getting
him to practise and he built up his initial technique on his own
by playing chamber music with Salvador Viniegra, a family
friend. Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from gaining entry
easily enough to the class of the virtuoso José Tragó at the Real
Conservatorio in Madrid; indeed, it laid the foundations of a
different and thoroughly anti-Romantic approach to the piano.