Wilhem LATCHOUMIA

In this voyage of discovery of Falla’s output for piano, how did you

approach the early pieces?

The first piece by Falla I played was the

Homenaje

for Debussy, probably for

a thematic concert. Then I moved on directly to the

Fantasía bætica

, going

backwards in a sense, and only then did I start thinking about the early pieces for a

hypothetical disc. That retrospective approach helped me to find little details in his

first publishedworks that herald the language of hismaturity. They’re very tiny, but

that only makes them all the more striking. If you’re not aware of the culmination

represented by the

Fantasía bætica

and the individuality of its syntax, youmight see

in these youthful works no more than slightly trivial salon pieces. But when you

knowwhere this style leads, the first signs of a special language appear.

Yes, but surely you’re not known as the kind of pianist who goes in for

‘the complete works’ . . .

With Falla, the corpus is a small one, but above all it displays unity of style

and coherence – I didn’t feel confronted with several periods spread out over a

composer’s whole life, but with an entity whose individual parts constitute a

whole. If the masterpiece is the

Fantasía bætica

(and it is), all the other works

revolve around it.

WILHEM LATCHOUMIA