De Falla's 'Ritual Fire Dance' from the ballet 'El Amor Brujo' (Love the Magician), is probably his most popular work, made famous by the pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1887 - 1982), who used it as an encore. The composer, frustrated with Spanish musical life, had moved to Paris in 1907, rubbing shoulders with the city's finest musicians and absorbing new ideas, only returning to Spain at the outbreak of war in 1914. Finished in 1915 and described as a 'gypsy ballet' set in Granada, de Falla uses not only flamenco influences, but some of the more radical techniques he had learned in France. With its trills, ornaments and overt exoticism, the 'Ritual Fire Dance' describes the wild frenzy of the heroine in front of a fire, desperately attempting to drive out the thoughts of her dead lover.
