Gregor Benko, a piano music expert, music producer, and family friend, said Ms. de Larrocha had been in poor health for two years, since breaking her hip.
She retired from public performances in 2003 after 75 years as a professional pianist.
Born in Barcelona, she began playing piano at age 3, and two years later gave her debut public performance during the International Exposition in Barcelona.
The daughter and niece of pianists, Ms. de Larrocha received classes from renowned teachers such as Frank Marshall, himself a disciple of Granados, and theorist Ricardo Lamote de Grignon.
Ms. de Larrocha was invited to play at Barcelona’s Palau de la Musica when only 6, and by age 11 she was a soloist with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra.
By the time she was 20, she was playing to full houses around Spain, displaying a style and skill that transcended her age. In 1947 she began to make an impression on the European circuit.
Ms. de Larrocha’s style combined poetic interpretation, gracefulness, and subtlety with technical virtuosity and remarkable focus, which enabled her to produce a beautifully layered sound capable of grand, temperamental flourishes.
She made her first trip to the United States in 1955 and toured with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The tour burnished her credentials as one of the world’s most outstanding pianists.
Reviewing the concert in The New York Times, Harold C. Schonberg wrote of her Spanish set that “she had a way of idiomatically shaping a musical phrase that cannot be taught - a sudden dynamic shift, a note instinctively accented, a touch of the pedal, an application of rubato. Her rhythm was extraordinarily flexible. Obviously this music is in the pianist’s blood. She invested it with a degree of life and imagination that not many pianists before the public today could begin to duplicate.’’
She became a regular performer at New York’s Lincoln Center and at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, where she annually played Mozart pieces.
Her recordings earned her four Grammies.
She was married to the late Spanish pianist Juan Torra, with whom she had two children.
