Considering how good a player Falla was—he won a piano competition the day after winning the prize for his opera La vida breve—he wrote surprisingly little piano music: the present disc (which has to be made up by adding transcriptions from his ballets) in fact contains all of it except a now lost Concert allegro written as a Conservatoire test piece, a handful of early salon trifles and the austere homage to Paul Dukas (whose omission is regrettable). Larrocha's performance of the Cuatro piezas espanolas is the only one in the current catalogue (even on LP); but it is so entirely idiomatic and sensitive—sensuous in ''Cubana'', pungent in ''Andaluza'' and evocative in ''Montanesa'', which combines Debussian bell-sounds and a lively Asturian dance—that a rival version is not needed.
In the Fantasia betica of a dozen years later, dedicated to Artur Rubinstein and couched in an altogether harsher and more incisive Andalusian style, a certain degree of edginess in the recorded piano tone (noticeable also at the start of the ''Aragonesa'' of the Piezas) may be partly responsible for some impression of objectivity and coolness. I have heard more passionate and exciting readings that this, but there is a clarity of detail and feeling for timbre which are altogether admirable. The transcriptions are played with vividly imaginative tone-colours: if these movements must be transferred from their orchestral originals, I doubt if they could be better done than here.'