Alkan was considered by many – both during his lifetime and since – as one of the greatest composer-pianists in history. Hans von Bülow called him “the Berlioz of the piano” and others compared him to Liszt and Chopin. Alkan was saved from complete obscurity by the series of recordings made by Raymond Lewenthal in the LP era. Now Marc-André Hamelin, along with other pianists, is keeping the composer’s lamp burning – in spite of the horrendous technical difficulties of much of Alkan’s piano music.
Alkan wrote a dozen technically-forbidding etudes, considered some of the most uncompromising writing in all of piano literature. Three of them have been group as the separate movements of the Symphony for solo piano and numbers 8, 9 and 10 as the Concerto for solo piano. The composer’s idea was the translation of orchestral sonorities into a pianistic counterpart. Its initial two movements are a pianistic roller-coaster ride, but the final pages of the finale has some of the most taxing music ever written for the piano – outdoing both Liszt and Chopin.
Alkan’s Chants were inspired by Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. He even followed the key sequence of the fellow Jewish composer’s first book of Songs Without Words. There are six of these chants, and the closing Barcarolle has been recorded previously by both Hamelin and Ronald Smith, who described it as a “pre-echo of the 20s…the piece of Mendelssohn’s that Gershwin forgot to write!” As always, Hamelin’s virtuosity is up to everything Alkan throws our way, and the same can be said for Hyperion’s rich and transparent sonics. A top recommendation!
– John Sunier
