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[Дмитрий Ларош]

В настоящее время подготавливаю к печати небольшое исследование,
посвященное французскому композитору-романтику Шарлю-Валентену Алькану.
В меркантильных целях :) открываю опрос,чтобы узнать хотя бы примерно,известен ли он и его творчество среди музыкантов.

Thanks.

Буду благодарен всем проголосовавшим

8)

[krivitch]

А где голосовать? :)
Мне он достаточно знаком, во многом благодаря В.П. Чинаеву, правда, играть еще ни разу не случалось... 8)

Кстати, может, сделать опрос?

[Eugene]

Буду благодарен всем проголосовавшим
Судя по всему, опрос находится там же, где и чат :-?

[беглец с ноева ковчега]

Я уже проголосовал.

[Eugene]

Я уже проголосовал.
Где?? Мне, кажется уже тоже пора... Вслед за krivitch в балетках и Дмитрием с бутылками :roll:

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Господа,по-моему форум в глубоком дауне,ей-богу :evil: ...

Я загружал этот многострадальный поток 6 [прописью-шесть] раз.
2 раза опрос загрузился.
Остальное время-нет.

Блин.

:horror:

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Мне он достаточно знаком, во многом благодаря В.П. Чинаеву, правда, играть еще ни разу не случалось... 8)


[все более и более уважительно]

Анечка,а можно поподробнее?

Вы задели самые чувствительные струны моей души :))))

[krivitch]

С какого места поподробнее? :)
Несмотря на то,что это было несколько лет назад,я даже помню, с каких именно этюдов мы начали-
"Дьявольское скерцо" и "Подобно ветру" в исп. Рональда Смита.
В целом, впечатление, помнится, было довольно умилительное и еще подумалось, что пожалуй, Ленц изобрел хороший эпитет для своих современников:"Отменные мастера удовольствия", или что-то в этом духе :) Все легко и как бы несерьезно, даже серьезные вещи вызывают улыбку...Почти детский восторг, вызванный новыми возможностями инструмента...Да, интересная была эпоха, несмотря на всю гигантоманию :)

Кстати, А.Г.Рубинштейн:
"Совершенство должно быть почитаемо во всех проявлениях"

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Все легко и как бы несерьезно, даже серьезные вещи вызывают улыбку...Почти детский восторг, вызванный новыми возможностями инструмента...Да, интересная была эпоха, несмотря на всю гигантоманию :)


Анна,а Вы слышали "Этюды op.76"?

По поводу детского восторга-несколько не согласен.Вы слышали Концерт для фортепиано соло из ор.39?

А при чем тут Чинаев?

[krivitch]

Нет, концерт не слышала.
А Чинаев, собственно, вел у нас историю пианизма на первом курсе :)

[Дмитрий Ларош]

А....

Глючный чендж-Чинаева на Меркулова... :alcohol:

Концерт-это,вероятно самое технически опасное сочинение в фортепианной литературе.

[krivitch]

Серьезно самое опасное? Заинтригована и насторожена :)

P.S.
Лето сменяется осенью, история фортепианного искусства -методикой,
исполнительство- педагогикой... :roll:

[Дмитрий Ларош]

:lol:

Анна,я об этом уже давно кричу...

Готов выслать ноты,если Вы согласны его учить.... :lol:

[krivitch]

Для начала действительно хотелось бы на него посмотреть :)

А если я не буду учить - Вы не пришлете ноты?...http://animac.narod.ru/smiles/smail/shuffle.gif

[regards]

Признаюсь, впервые услышал об Алькане здесь. Поскольку Дмитрий создал себе абсолютную репутацию, я уже принял меры к получению записей и нот, но утверждение о концерте как самом опасном - это отдельный вызов. Был бы счастлив видеть ноты по возвращении. И сразу предложение: давайте издадим концерт, если, конечно, он окажется таким, как утверждает Дмитрий, в чём мало оснований сомневаться, ограниченным тиражом и раздадим (бесплатно) сегодняшним студентам ф-п факультета МГК? По стопам Юдиной...:)

[Romka]

Зачем издавать, чтобы бесплатно раздавать? Набрать и выложить для всех желающих! Кстати, легко...

[Сергей]

A vot interesno: ya progolosoval "znakom s muzykoy". No znakom ved' tol'ko glazami, no ne ushami! A vot takogo punkta v oprose net... :(

[Eugene]

И сразу предложение: давайте издадим концерт, если, конечно, он окажется таким, как утверждает Дмитрий, в чём мало оснований сомневаться, ограниченным тиражом и раздадим (бесплатно) сегодняшним студентам ф-п факультета МГК? По стопам Юдиной...:)
А Юдина какую музыку раздавала? Надеюсь, получше, чем Алькана? ;)

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Надеюсь, получше, чем Алькана? ;)

А Вам не нравится Алькан :question:

[Eugene]

А Вам не нравится Алькан :question:
Знаю только его этюды в минорных и мажорных тональностях - не могу сказать, что нравятся. Вы что-то еще посоветуете?

[Дмитрий Ларош]

:horror:

Все...

буду последним и единственным фанатом Алькана...

С Марком-Андре... :alcohol:

[Eugene]

буду последним и единственным фанатом Алькана...

С Марком-Андре... :alcohol:
Подождите, не отчайвайтесь раньше времени! Может, еще и regards к Вам присоединится ;)
И всё-таки, что еще посоветуете?

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Eugene,извините,у меня омлет горит

Вскоре напишу

:P :arrow:

[Gtn]

Уважаемый Дмитрий! А не могли бы вы для ликбеза вынести сюда информацию об Алькане. Да поподробнее. Или она уже где-то здесь прячется, а я не знаю.

А еще бы и если ноты ли бы...

[Eugene]

Уважаемый Дмитрий! А не могли бы вы для ликбеза вынести сюда информацию об Алькане. Да поподробнее. Или она уже где-то здесь прячется, а я не знаю.

А еще бы и если ноты ли бы...
35-й опус Алькана (12 этюдов в мажорных тональностях) можно посмотреть здесь:
Этюды 1-6 (http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/scores/aje7079/large/index.html)
и здесь:
Этюды 7-12 (http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/scores/aje5988/large/index.html)

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Самая толковая статья на английском.Как только допишу текст выложу сюда.

[Дмитрий Ларош]

The strange case of Charles Valentin Alkan by James F. Penrose
(http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/11/may93/alkan.htm)


The actual stuff and substance of his music … is of such startling oddity, such intensely personal and individual quality, shot through with an eerie, uncanny feeling that makes it of irresistible fascination.
—Kaikhosru Sorabji, Mi Contra Fa

For someone thought by Liszt to possess the greatest piano technique of the age and equally esteemed by Busoni as one of the great composers for the piano after Beethoven, Charles Valentin Alkan has certainly fallen on hard times. Even before his death on Holy Thursday, 1888, Alkan had fallen into the unremitting obscurity from which he is only now beginning to emerge. History is happenstance: it can be as harsh to an Alkan as it can be kind to a Satie.

Though apparently a warm, if somewhat shy, young man, Alkan developed into a notorious misanthrope and hermit in his later years. During his periods of seclusion he wrote much of his daunting and beautiful music while slowly shedding his early friendships with Hugo, Delacroix, Sand, Dumas, Liszt, and others in that glittering circle. Late in life, Alkan emerged from his solitude to give a remarkable series of retrospective petits-concerts featuring works by then-disregarded composers such as Rameau, Bach, Haydn, and Mozart. At a time when the late Beethoven sonatas were relatively unpopular, Alkan played them in little-attended performances held evenings & 9 heures tr&s-pr&cises in a room at the Salle Erard featuring a grand piano and the piano-p&dalier on which Alkan was, by all accounts, an astonishing virtuoso. The controversial circumstances of his death are probably the most remembered thing about him, and the moonstruck explanations surrounding that occasion are legendary.

A new collection of fifteen essays on Alkan, collected and edited by Brigitte Fran&ois-Sappey, has lately been published in France. [1] (http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/11/may93/alkan.htm#fn1) It is an interesting and useful guide to the composer and his works, and supplements the two-volume study of Alkan by the British pianist and Alkanomane Ronald Smith (London, 1976 and 1987). Madame Fran&ois-Sappey has contributed three essays to the collection, the most important being a long study of Alkan’s neglected and staggering Grande Sonate. Two pianists, Pierre R&ach and Laurent Martin, bring a performer’s perspective to the collection. There are analyses of Alkan’s chamber music and organ and p&dalier works. The book also includes pieces on Alkan’s religiousness and his fascination with unusual titles. Hugh MacDonald, whose lively and informed pieces have done much to rekindle interest in Alkan, has contributed an informative piece on Alkan’s compositional style.

Valentin Alkan was born in 1813 (the same year as Wagner and Verdi) in the rue de Braque in the Marais district of Paris, the second of six children. His father, Alkan Morhange, was an Ashkenazic Jew who ran a preparatory school in the rue des Blancs-Manteaux, so successful in teaching musical subjects that one writer termed it une annexe juvenile du Conservatoire. The Morhange children all adopted their father’s first name as the family patronymic and Charles Valentin signed himself “C. V. Alkan a&n&,” i.e., Alkan the elder.

Alkan was a prodigy. At six, he was accepted by the Paris Conservatoire. When eight, he won first prize in solf&ge and at ten, first prize in piano under the suave and ultranationalistic P. J. G. Zimmermann (who later refused to meet the young American prodigy Louis Moreau Gottschalk on the entirely reasonable grounds that l’Am&rique n’etait qu’un pays de machines & vapeur). [2] (http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/11/may93/alkan.htm#fn2)
At thirteen, Alkan took first prize in harmony and at twenty he finished things off with a first in organ. Alkan was r&p&titeur in solf&ge at the Conservatoire from 1829 to 1836, where he taught Nadia Boulanger’s father. (Insofar as the expression “Every little town in America has a Woolworth’s and a pupil of Nadia Boulanger” contains a grain of truth, Alkan may have had some small influence on posterity.) His elder sister, C&leste, was admitted to the Conservatoire when she was seven and won the solf&ge prize at eleven. His brothers were equally talented, three of them taking eight Conservatoire “firsts” and a second place in the Prix de Rome. Two brothers (and Alkan’s illegitimate son) finished their careers as professors at the Conservatoire, then, as now, a pinnacle of French musical life.

Zimmermann was more than just Alkan’s teacher. He promoted the young man’s career by appointing him his assistant. Zimmermann also used his extensive social connections to introduce young Valentin to those soirees where musical reputations were hatched. Alkan seems to have taken to this hothouse world of high society and high culture. He cultivated (and dedicated several works to) des dames tr&s parfum&es et froufroutantes and moved into the fashionable Square d’Orl&ans near Zimmermann, Friedrich W. M. Kalkbrenner, and his new friend Fr&d&ric Chopin. Chopin (who rarely enthused about anyone) was much taken by Alkan’s pianism and compositions. Moreover, the two found each other convivial company and occasionally performed together. They also shared piano students from the pampered classes, which arrangement would certainly have benefited Alkan, as lessons with Chopin were exceptionally expensive.

By 1838, Alkan had reached the peak of his acclaim. He also seems to have had increasing difficulty in balancing the demands of popular fame against his musical and pedagogical aspirations and against a fast-developing horror of what he considered the musically commonplace. He reacted to these pressures by dropping out of sight for some six years.

Like many artists, Alkan thrived on contradiction: though a prodigiously gifted performer, he disliked performing; well-connected socially, he was easily disappointed in friendship; though interested in socialism, he worshiped Napoleon III. His penchant for extremes was reflected in his music, which often featured odd titular pairings such as Ma ch&re Libert& and Ma ch&re Servitude, Neige et Lave, and Jean qui Pleure and Jean qui Rit. The effect of his artistic and emotional peculiarities on others was heightened by a morbid sensitivity coupled with a whiplash tongue. Alkan seems to have taken as his personal motto the phrase “truth lies in the extremes.”

One by one, Alkan resolved these discords. The process was hastened by his failure to be appointed as Zimmermann’s successor at the Conservatoire—undoubtedly because Auber, the director, had been clawed one too many times by the prickly Alkan—and by the appointment of Antoine Marmontel, a former pupil of Alkan’s. The second accelerator was the death of Chopin in November 1849. Alkan went into seclusion again, this time for twenty-five years.

Almost all of Alkan’s surviving works are written for the piano. The finest of these were completed during the fifteen years from 1847. During this period, Alkan published the 25 Pr&ludes, the Grande Sonate, the Douze Etudes dans les tons majeurs (the Major Key Etudes), the Douze Etudes dans les tons mineurs (the Minor Key Etudes), the Sonatine, and the forty-eight Esquisses.

Much of Alkan’s writing has a melancholy or depressive component, perhaps most effectively described as “cold.” It should not be concluded, however, that his music is doleful or mournful. Alkanian melancholia can be, paradoxically, very high-voltage indeed. His intense rhythmic pulse, simultaneous exploitation of the highest and lowest reaches of the keyboard, and generation of almost unbelievable sonorities leave the listener both exhilarated and appalled. At its most icy and magnificent, when the performer is almost prone with the effort of delivering himself of the extreme emotional and physical demands of the music, Alkan generates the most remarkable sensation in his listeners that they have just smelled, or, more precisely, thought that they smelled some deep, smoking thing. The effect of this marvelous writing arrests even a present-day listener; the sadness, the demonism, the omnipresent foreboding, the palpably sinister all gleam darkly through the rush of sound. Alkan’s freshness of effect is startling: the conjurings of Weber and Liszt, once so evocative of misfortune, have been rendered in our century as trite and banal through the counterfeiting and reworking of their techniques by advertising, cartoons, and the latest world-premi&re network movie. [3] In listening to Alkan’s works, we recall an almost forgotten ability to be stirred by these dark emotions. His obsessional repetitions, the haunting melodies and distressing harmonies, the propulsive power and the almost suffocating intensity of the music deliver a formidable shock.

The sanctum sanctorum of Alkan’s music is found in the twelve Minor Key Etudes (published in 1857) and the Grande Sonate (published in 1848). The technical demands of this music are so burdensome that performance is restricted to only a handful of pianists. Notwithstanding the musical literacy of the nineteenth century, one wonders how a music publisher could have ever believed that there was a popular market for works of this difficulty.

The Minor Key Etudes are divided into two books. The first book contains seven studies, including the four constituting the Symphonie. The second book contains the three-movement Concerto, the Ouverture, and the marvelous twelfth etude, Le Festin d’Aesope (“Aesop’s Feast”).

The first book begins with the aptly titled perpetual-motion study Comme le Vent. A glance at the first bar is sufficient to indicate the pianistic pain that lies ahead: the unusual 2/16 time signature (fast), the injunction Prestissamente (faster), the 160 metronome marking and the pair of thirty-second note triplets (fastest). When the performer realizes that the etude continues for twenty-one pages, [4] the horrified reaction is usually disguised as feigned amusement or eye-rolling scorn. The second and third studies are severe and enigmatic pieces characterized, in the first, by a characteristically quirky Alkanian rhythm and, in the second, by a menacing formality.

The jewels of the first book, however, are the four studies grouped as the Symphonie. At fifty pages, the work is as long as a Liszt transcription of a Beethoven symphony. To analogize the Liszt and Alkan offerings further, however, would be misleading, for although the Liszt transcriptions are masterly undertakings, Liszt himself considered that he was but “an intelligent engraver, a conscientious translator” of the works of others. Alkan’s approach was quite different: the Symphonie was conceived and written for piano alone. Alkan hedged the limitations of the piano by his ability to evoke orchestral effects from the keyboard.

The Symphonie begins with the fourth etude, marked Allegro Moderato, featuring a brooding theme developed in his economic and formal style. The Marche Fun&bre second movement commences with a grim rustling drumbeat that gives way to a lovely and consoling secondary theme reminiscent of the lyrical treatment in the funeral march of his friend Chopin’s B-flat minor Sonata, before returning to the first figure and wandering despondently away. The third movement (the sixth etude) is a jittery Minuet while the Finale is one of Alkan’s characteristic and terrifying glories, rhythmically inexorable, implacably developed, and, at its climax, maniacally ferocious.

The second book commences with the three etudes making up the Concerto. This gigantic work is longer than most concerti with orchestra, the first movement alone continuing for seventy-three pages. The tenth etude, marked Allegretto alla Barbaresca, is a thrilling and horripilating polonaise. The eleventh etude, an Ouverture, is the third in the series of quasi-orchestral forms, but is scarcely the curtain-raising crowd-pleaser normally associated with the genre. This intense and inward-looking study hurls the listener in medias res with a theme introduced by rapidly repeated chords. The set concludes with Le Festin d’Aesope, perhaps the best known study of the twelve. In theme-and-variation form, the piece showcases Alkan’s uncanny ability to musically describe the extra-musical: a menagerie of dogs, fish, fleas, and birds. It also serves, as Mme Fran&ois-Sappey notes, as a summary compendium of the pianistic techniques of the preceding eleven studies.

The Grande Sonate was written when Alkan was only thirty-three and shows him to be then possessed of both a fabulous technique and an incomparable sense of personal isolation. Subtitled Les Quatre Ages, each of the four movements (titled “20 years”, “30 years: Quasi-Faust”, “40 years: Un heureux m&nage,” and “50 years: Prom&th&e encha&n&”) is a psychological evocation of a period of creative life.

The structure of the Grande Sonate is most unusual, progressing from a brisk Scherzo first movement to an Assez vite second movement, to a slow third movement in G major and thence to a last movement, marked Extr&mement lent, in G-sharp minor; the effect of these progressively slower and cooler movements is one of increasing gravity and burden. The Scherzo is disarmingly precocious, rocketing through many key changes before focusing on D-sharp minor, the cool and remote key of the Quasi-Faust second movement. Quasi-Faust is one of the most remarkable pieces of music—let alone piano music—of the nineteenth century, with its closely fought struggle between Hell and redemption culminating in an eight-part (not including doublings) fugue, the argument of which is at once cold and deeply exciting. The third movement, with its shy, song-like passages, is something of a balm to the listener still in an uproar from the previous movement. The temperature of the Grande Sonate takes a sharp dive in a last movement of unremitting bleakness, emotionally similar to the last movement of the Chopin Funeral March sonata except for a final, terminally defiant chord.

The unity of the Grande Sonate is reminiscent of the Schubert Wanderer Fantasy and predictive of the Liszt B minor Sonata, which are its chief competitors in the category of most-original-work-of-the-age. Mme Fran&ois-Sappey’s long analysis of the piece is a valuable work, despite a perplexing discussion of the numerology behind the opus number of the piece (33), the age of the composer when he wrote it (33), the age of the composer when the piece was published (34), and the age of the composer’s father when his elder son was born (34).

Little is known about Alkan’s reclusive years when he kept only the most tenuous links with the outside world. We do know, however, that during this time Alkan mastered the p&dalier, that curious and defunct child of the piano and organ and a plausible (if typically aberrant) choice of instrument for one who took first prize at the Conservatoire in those more conventional instruments. Alkan played an Erard p&dalier, a full grand piano whose bass strings were connected to a thirty-note pedalboard. It was, perhaps, for this reason that Alkan kept two apartments, one on top of the other, as a means of containing the hellish din which was undoubtedly produced when the old man was in full cry.

Alkan also composed for the p&dalier, writing a series of thirteen Pri&res, an Impromptu on A Mighty Fortress, and several other works that range from the religious and muted to the incendiary. Two peculiar works were a set of etudes for feet alone and a remarkably odd duet for four feet, the Bombardo-Carillon. When the pianist Rudolph Ganz was asked to play the Bombardo-Carillon with a female pupil of his, he demurred on the grounds that he did not know the young lady well enough.

Except for the occasional spark of interest in his music, Alkan’s sad posterity has been the legend of his death. Joining such illustrious company as Koczwara (autoerotic asphyxia) and Lully (stabbed himself with his baton while conducting), Alkan was reputed to have died by being crushed under his bookcase. Such a lurid demise was obviously ripe for embroidery, and embroidered it was: we learn, for example, that the book Alkan sought was a volume of the Talmud. Along with earlier work by Hugh MacDonald showing the vast implausibility of this scenario, Constance Himmelfarb has unearthed evidence suggesting that in fact Alkan had been ill for some period and that death resulted from an accretion of problems over time rather than from the conventionally grotesque version.

Alkan’s most salient trait was his distinctive musical language. Though born in the nineteenth century, his output was not dictated by the conventions of the time: he was deeply comfortable with classical form yet within those constraints he created most unusual works. Though a man who lived much of his life within the disciplines of the past, his idiosyncratic style anticipated twentieth-century composers such as Bart&k, Cowell, Mahler, and Messiaen. Alkan’s astonishingly innovative use of traditional musical language may well yet vindicate Busoni’s judgment of this often great (but always greatly misunderstood) figure. But we shouldn’t hold our collective breath. For many years, the BBC celebrated April Fools’ Day with a series of fabricated news stories. One year, the evening news featured a piece about a typical Italian spaghetti farm where happy rustics harvested spaghetti from bushes. A subsequent episode dealt with the impending conversion of Big Ben into a giant digital clock, beeping and blinking the time every quarter hour.

On another occasion, the BBC featured a story about a reclusive French composer who concocted unplayable works for a bizarre instrument that combined an organ pedalboard with a grand piano, who in his younger days was a piano virtuoso of almost superhuman ability, and who died by being crushed by his bookcase when he attempted to remove a book from the top shelf. Chuckling with delight that it had not been tricked again, the public lumped one of the great post-Beethoven composers with spaghetti bushes and other April Fools’ Day antics. It seems both unfair and yet somehow appropriate that Alkan should have been buried on April 1, 1888 (coincidentally, Easter Sunday), in Montmartre Cemetery.

[Дмитрий Ларош]

From High Fidelity - July 1982 pp 50-51, 80


Charles Valentin Alkan:
The Mahler of the Piano
Two significant releases may signal
a boom for a great forgotten master.
Reviewed by Irving Lowens


In his preface to the great Breitkopf edition of the collected works of Franz Liszt, Ferrucio Busoni proclaimed that master the equal of "the greatest of the post-Beethoven composers for the piano: Chopin, Schumann, Alkan, Brahms". Busoni's enthusiasm for Liszt is understandable, but what was the name of Charles Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) doing on that list of immortals, penned in 1906?

Busoni meant what he said, and now more that three-quarters of a century after he said it, the average music lover has an opportunity to test the validity of his claim, thanks to this prodigious recording by Ronald Smith of what is perhaps Alkan's most astounding composition, the Twelve Études in all the minor keys, Op. 39. This fantastic work, never before recorded complete, occupies 277 pages of score; Smith plays it in just over two hours - twice the time it takes Vladimir Ashkenazy to play all twenty-four Études, Opp. 10 and 25 by Alkan's good friend, Chopin. Perhaps an even more accurate measure of the scope of Alkan's accomplishment is the fact that Ashkenazy plays the entire Chopin Op. 10 in less time than it takes Smith to play the single Alkan Étude, Op. 38, No. 8.

But there is much more to Op. 39 than mere elephantiasis; much more than "marvelous sonorities and such difficulties as reach the utmost bounds of piano playing," to quote Isidore Phillip, who was in large part responsible for preserving the Alkan heritage by persuading the French publisher Costallat to reprint all of Alkan's music, long unavailable, at the turn of the century. Kaikhosru Sorabji, that eccentric composer of fantastically demanding piano music, wrote of Alkan's Op. 39 in 1932: "These amazing works place him among the great masters of piano music . . . the prodigious, teeming richness of invention, the vivid originality, the very individual harmony, the superb mastery of these works cannot be too highly admired." And if you question the judgment of Sorabji, an acknowledged oddball, here are the reactions of a few hardboiled professional critics to their first hearing of part of Alkan's Op. 38 in the 1960s: "Some of the writing is prophetic, some of it is inspired, all of it attests to a remarkable imagination" (Harold C. Schonberg, New York Times): "tough, severe, dramatic music, utterly unlike anyone else's" (Stanley Sadie, London Times); "as much much of his best music is almost unplayably difficult, it is easy enough to see why he has never received his due as the most original composer for the piano of his century" (Roger Fisk, Gramophone).

It’s true. Having heard the “Alkan Project” (as Arabesque dubs its American release of this 1978 HMV issue) and just about every other Alkan piano recording in or out of print, I must concur. Aided by a few prescient, technically equipped pianists such as Smith, Alkan’s time has come. In the past, aficionados, following the lead of Hans von Bulow, often referred to Alkan as “the Berlioz of the piano”, and with good reason. Yet in the light of his unique compositional technique and what should become a real Alkan boom, it might be more accurate today to call him “the Mahler of the piano”.

This is not the place to detail Alkan’s curious career as a virtuoso and the reasons for his reputation as one of the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century. Those interested can consult the first volume of Smith’s biography, Alkan: the Enigma (New York: Crescendo Publishing, 1977); the long-promised second volume, discussing the music, has not yet appeared. Suffice it to say that Alkan rarely performed his own music; in the 1970s, when he returned to the recital hall after a long absence, his programs were replete with such oddities as Couperin, Scarlatti, Rameau, Handel, W. F. Bach, J. S. Bach, Clementi, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Field -- a strange mix during that period. And since virtually no one else played Alkan during his lifetime, he was banished to the archives after his death as an interesting but inconsequential composer.

His exhumation by Phillipp and Busoni has already been touched upon, but little came of their advocacy. The cause was next taken up by Busoni’s pupil Egon Petri, who was invited by the BBC to give three Alkan recitals in 1938 - 39 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the composer’s birth (and the fiftieth of his death). Petri’s performance of the “Symphony” and the “Concerto” from Op. 39 sharply divided the London critics, and the coming of the Second World War in 1939 plus Petri’s subsequent poor health put an end to the premature Alkan revival and to the possibility of any Alkan recordings. There is no record of any commercial 78-rpm disc of Alkan’s music.

Smith was the first of the pianists active today to fall under Alkan’s spell though not the first to record him. In 1960, Smith was invited by a small British label, Triumph Superfi, to record Alkan (including the “Symphony” and the “Concerto”), but before he could do so, the firm went bankrupt. Shortly thereafter, Raymond Lewenthal appeared on the scene; he played a sensationally successful Alkan recital in Town Hall in 1964 and another the next year in Carnegie Hall. This inspired RCA to bring out a disc (LSC 2815, deleted) that included, among other works, the thirty-minute “Symphony” in a fine performance. Smith’s turn to record finally came in 1969, when EMI released, first, an anthology of short works (HQS 1247), exhibiting Alkan’s genius as a miniaturist, and shortly thereafter, the “Concerto” (HQS 1204).

In 1971 came the flowering. A new Alkan convert was revealed with John Ogdon’s recording of the “Concerto” (RCA LSC 3192, deleted). Meanwhile, late in 1969, the French music publisher Heugel had issued a collection of Alkan’s music edited by Georges Beck, which was followed (also in 1971) by a Harmonia Mundi recording of selections from that album, beautifully played by Bernard Ringeissen (Musical Heritage Society MHS 1344). In the same year, Lewenthal recorded a selection of short Alkan pieces for Columbia (M 30234, deleted) and Michael Ponti tackled eight of the twelve Op. 39 Etudes for Candide (CE 31045).

Thereafter, it was all Smith. Around 1972, he recorded a number of selections, including Op. 39, No. 12 on two mid-nineteenth-century pianos, a Schneider and an Erard (Orynx 1803; released here by Musical Heritage as OR 174, deleted), and in 1974, he recorded the Grande Sonate, Op. 33, another of Alkan’s Himalayan peaks, for EMI (HQS 1326). Finally, in 1978, came the album under review.

Before discussing the recording itself, some description of the amazing nature and proportions of Op. 39 is essential for the reader to comprehend the magnitude of Smith’s achievement in mastering and recording the entire set. In his regrettably truncated jacket note, he concedes that “this formidable cycle must . . . have grown--rather like Frankenstein’s monster--far beyond the confines of its creator’s original intention. Containing, as it does, a sizable ’Overture,’ a monumental ’Symphony”, and a titanic “Concerto”, the term ‘study’ must seem singularly inappropriate unless one considers these works as studies in the pianistic translation of orchestral sonorities. As such, they stand alone. . . .“ Only Op. 39, No. 1, an incredibly difficult study in velocity and feathery lightness, can be considered an &tude in the Chopin-esque sense, but can you imagine a Chopin &tude that is twenty-one pages long? No, 2 “in Molossic rhythm” (6/4 meter, to the uninitiated) is full of heavy sonorities and piquant dissonances -- an altogether fascinating piece in the form of a rondo, driven inexorably forward by an insistent metrical pattern. The “Scherzo diabolico”, No. 3, the shortest piece in the set, almost sounds like a sketch for Liszt’s Mephisto Waltzes, or an eccentric Chopin scherzo.

The next four &tudes comprise a full-scale symphony on Beethovenian lines -- but for piano rather than orchestra -- running almost exactly a half-hour. This is followed by an even more astounding conception -- a three-movement concerto for piano without orchestra which may well be the longest work in the solo piano literature aside from Sorabji’s Opus clavicembalisticum. The score is 121 pages long; the first movement alone , which takes thirty minutes to play, runs seventy-two pages (1,341 measures). Smith goes through the Concerto in fifty-two minutes.

Here Alkan attempts the nearly impossible -- to portray the solo piano and orchestral roles found in a concerto on the piano alone -- and succeeds beyond belief. “The solo piano part resembles that of a Chopin, Moscheles, Hummel or Weber concerto with emphasis on delicate filigree patterns and brilliance of a light sort (‘le jeu perl&’) -- in other words, the solo piano is the ‘ornamenting’ factor’, wrote Joseph Bloch of this work in 1941. “The orchestral part is represented by the massive chords of which Alkan is so fond, by the characteristic orchestral trills and tremolos, and by a variety of brass and timpani effects. Also, the orchestral part reveals a constant interweaving of separate lines, whereas the solo piano is almost entirely homophonic.”

Number 11, a complex of studies in chords and double notes running to twenty-nine pages and “unified” by its title (“Overture”), is probably the weakest piece, musically, in the set. The final &tude comprises a theme and twenty five variations – an undoubted masterpiece that has been compared to Brahms’ Handel Variations and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Here, Alkan-esque grotesquerie and imagination reach their height, and some scholars consider “Le Festin d’Ésope” his finest achievement.

Smith stands up to his colleagues magnificently and sweeps the field. Neither Ponti nor Lewenthal approaches the power of his interpretations. Sonically, Arabesque easily outclasses those RCA and Candide recordings, now more than a decade old. There is some slight challenge in Ogdon’s performance of the “Concerto” and in Ringeissen’s performance of the “Scherzo diabolico” – at least in terms of virtuosity, and in Ogdon’s case, in terms of poetry. Unfortunately, Ogdon’s engineering (on the American RCA pressing at any rate) is quite inferior. I would very much like to hear what Ringeissen can do with some of the other &tudes; it is a pity that he has recorded only No. 3. Smith’s earlier version of “Le Festin d’Ésope”, performed on a c. 1855 Erard piano (Op. 39 was published in 1857), is fascinating – in some ways even more convincing than his performance on a modern piano.

The added entries on the sixth side of the Arabesque album are considerably more than mere fillers. The “Trois Petites fantasies”, Op. 41, published in the same year as the Études, Op. 39 are “petite” in somewhat the same sense as Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle is; the set runs about eighteen minutes and is hair-raisingly difficult, quirky, and quite bewitching. “La Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer” (“The Song of the Madwoman on the Seashore”) does more than illustrate Alkan’s penchant for peculiar titles – it is a mesmerizing etching in sound of a Hoffmannesquely wild scene. And the “Allegro barbaro,” the obvious inspiration for Bartok’s piece by the same name, is a fierce study in octaves composed in the Lydian mode, one of the best numbers on Alkan’s companion set of Douze Études dans les tons majeures, Op. 35 – a true &tude.

My one cavil in regard to the “Alkan Project” has to do with its totally inadequate jacket notes. In introducing such an exotic and little-known composer as Alkan – and for many, this set will be a genuine revelation – it stacks the deck against composer and performer to skimp on words and pictures. That’s being penny-wise and very pound-foolish. The attempt should be to get the potential listener to spin the disc and hear the music, and that takes a bit of doing. Arabesque should have tried harder.

Though Alkan was primarily a composer of music for the piano, that instrument did not monopolize his attention to the exclusion of all else. In 1857, the same year that saw the publication of Op. 39 and Op. 41 (annus mirabilis!), the Grande sonate for cello and piano, Op. 47, also appeared. Although dedicated to one James Odier, it was first performed by the greatest French cellist of the day, Auguste-Joseph Franchomme, with the composer at the keyboard. The piece turns out to be one of Alkan’s most personal and perfervid compositions. The cello part is beautifully shaped, and the piano part is as wild as almost anything in the Op. 39 Études. Like the rest of his music, the cello sonata was rarely if ever performed during Alkan’s lifetime after the premiere, and it took an English scholar and Alkan enthusiast, Hugh MacDonald (who wrote the Alkan entry in the New Grove), to bring it back to life by editing a new edition, which the German publishing firm of B&renreiter brought out in 1975. That led to the sonata’s first modern performance, by cellist Timothy Eddy and pianist Raymond Lewenthal in December 1975. Since then, there have been few if any live performances; this is (to appropriate Sacheverell Sitwell’s description of the concerto for solo piano) “a monumental work, to which the notice ‘Keep Out’ is applicable where the unwary amateur is concerned.”

Fortunately, cellist Yehuda Hanani and pianist Edward Auer are anything but “unwary amateurs”, and they give a superb account of themselves here. Of the four movements, the Adagio is perhaps the most affecting. Preceded by a Biblical epigraph from the old Testament (“. . . as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men . . .”), its twelve minutes are permeated by a rapt, mystical atmosphere. In the central portion, the piano floats and shimmers in the stratosphere, while erratic pizzacatos in some mysterious nonsymmetrical rhythm (perhaps derived from the rhythm of the epigraph) punctuate the singing line. The finale is a wild saltarello, which taxes Auer (and would tax any pianist) to the limit.

Finnadar gives its artists excellent engineering, silent surfaces, and an informative jacket note by Lewenthal. This is a cherishable release; buy it while it is still available.



All the above was written by Mr. Lowens in 1982. Since that time, Lewenthal has died, Smith has published Volume II of his Alkan books and Ringeissen has recorded more of the Op. 39 Études. Jack Gibbons has become the second person to record the entire Op. 39, Laurent Martin has recorded several discs and Marc-Andr& Hamelin has appeared on the scene, often trouncing the competition. Thankfully, most of the recordings mentioned by Mr. Lowens are now being re-issued on CD and an Alkan revival of sorts seems to be taking hold, and more strongly than before.

[беглец с ноева ковчега]

А Вам не нравится Алькан :question:
Знаю только его этюды в минорных и мажорных тональностях - не могу сказать, что нравятся. Вы что-то еще посоветуете?

Можно я посоветую?

Бетховен -Алькан.

Третий концерт.

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Можно я посоветую?
Бетховен -Алькан.
Третий концерт.

А особенно в записи Марка-Андре Амлена!

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Марк-Андре Амлен: Бетховен-Алькан:Концерт c-moll (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002ZVE/thealkansocie-21)

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Вот,собсна,рекомендации для Eugene 8) .

Хотя каждому,кто собирается познакомится с творчеством Алькана поближе,я даю послушать каденцию к вышеуказанной транскрипции 3 концерта Бетховена.Цитата из финала 5 симфонии производит практически на всех совершенно неизгладимое впечатление,ровно как и размеры каденции.

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Op.15 Trois morceaux dans le genre pathetique (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JJ3N/thealkansocie-21)

Одно из самых оригинальных произведений романтической фортепианной литературы.Совершенно гениальное воплощение заурядной идеи.

См.ниже подробнее.

[Дмитрий Ларош]

What is the significance of these titles? Britta Schilling-Wang is inclined to believe that they have a religious dimension (particularly 'Aime-moi' and 'Morte'), although one might also choose to see in them a profane programme similar to that of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, a kind of 'moving memories of an artist's life'. The fact that the main theme of 'Aime-moi' returns at the end of 'Morte' would seem to reinforce the cohesiveness of the collection, leading one to suspect that the work was intended as a continuous whole rather than as a set of extractable, individual pieces.

The Trois Morceaux dans le genre pathйtique were at the centre of a controversial discussion about programme music. As such, they were 'shot down' in 1838 by Schumann, whose vitriolic review later annoyed Alkan a great deal and seemed to him, more than anything, to be an illustration of the German's lack of understanding of the Frenchman's aesthetics. Schumann's criticism warrants extensive quotation:


One need cast no more than a cursory glance over this collection to get the picture of this Neo-Frenchman's taste: it smacks of Eugene Sue and G Sand. One finds oneself similarly gripped by the lack of art and real life. At least Liszt caricatures intelligently; and Berlioz, in spite of all his aberrations shows signs from time to time of having a human heart; he's a libertine, full of strength and daring. But here we find little more than frailty and a vulgarity devoid of any imagination. The studies have titles - 'Aime-moi', 'Le vent' and 'Morte' - and are distinguished throughout their fifty pages by a deluge of notes and a lack of even the slightest indication of performance markings; one cannot blame the capriccio itself for this, especially as we know, in any case, how to play this kind of piece; but in this instance, where the inner futility of the work sparkles alongside its apparent emptiness, what more could we expect? In 'Aime-moi', we have an uninspiring French melody and then we digress in ways which have absolutely nothing to do with the title; in 'Le vent', there is a chromatic moaning over a theme from Beethoven's Symphony in A major; and in the last piece we are faced with an endless boredom out of which nothing ever emerges except images of wood and sticks and strangulation, this latter idea being borrowed, what is more, from Berlioz.
We may choose to protect talent when it loses its way, but there has to be some kind of demonstration of musicianship; if even that becomes questionable and if we can no longer make out anything more than layers of darkness beneath darkness, then we are forced to turn our backs, unmoved.

One might have expected more perception from Schumann who himself had just written a set of variations on the theme of the Allegretto from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, those variations being peppered with quotations from works by the deaf master. As for the idea 'borrowed from Berlioz', this relates quite simply to the 'Dies irae', a theme composed appreciably earlier than the Symphonie Fantastique!

But in answer to this 'public execution', the Trois Morceaux also drew a complimentary appraisal from Franz Liszt, to whom the work is dedicated. The review which Liszt wrote is doubly important since it is the best evidence we have of the relationship between these two great piano masters. We know that the two artists knew, and sometimes spoke quite highly of, each other, but very few illustrations of this have survived. In an historically significant treatise, Alexandre de Bertha wrote: 'Alkan told me on a number of occasions how distressed he was when he first heard the young Franz Liszt play and, noticing Liszt's already stunning virtuosity, felt immediately relegated to the shadows. He had shed tears of frustration over this throughout the entire performance and had been unable to sleep a wink the following night. This was a little adolescent "brainstorm" which didn't prevent the two momentary rivals from forming a good relationship at a later date. That friendship was to last until the death of the "King of Piano" who, throughout his life, never missed an opportunity to visit his old-time friend when staying in Paris.'

In January 1836 Liszt, who was teaching piano at the newly-established Geneva Conservatoire, had to find a replacement for Wolff who had been acting as his assistant. He offered the post to Alkan who turned it down. That Liszt should have considered taking on his French colleague to teach at his side would seem to be a sign of exceptional respect. Furthermore, there is a copy of the score of Alkan's Impromptu sur le Chorale de Luther (Op 69) containing a dedication to the Hungarian pianist: 'To Abbй Liszt from his old and elder friend Alkan, 6/5/[18]66'. And yet, in his letters to Ferdinand Hiller in the 1850s, the French musician cannot resist passing comment on the Hungarian's aesthetic evolution and on 17 December 1865 writes:
'What do you think of the way our old friend Liszt is going off in a new direction? For my part, if I ever become a rabbi, I will never accept the post of music master in the synagogue, but will put on my rabbi's robes with total disinterest; but if it was once worth a man's while to convert to Catholicism in order to gain sovereignty over Paris, then perhaps it is worth donning a cassock in order to gain directorship of the choir school of St Peter's'.

In 1837 all this was still in the future of course, and Liszt's opinion of Alkan is notably more laudatory than Schumann's. He affirms at once that: 'Monsieur Alkan's capriccios, which I have read and re-read many times since the day when they first gave me such a sweet sense of joy, are as distinguished as any composition could be, and, all bias of friendship aside, are the sort of music which should awaken great interest amongst musicians'.

'Aime-moi', in A flat minor, opens with a beautiful melodic phrase of a truly Chopinesque Romanticism. The dialogue grows increasingly lively, the writing quickly becoming immensely difficult, such that Ronald Smith was moved to write that certain passages were seemingly written for an extinct race of seven-fingered pianists!

Whilst it is scarcely ever played these days, 'Le vent' was for a long time quite a popular work - so much so that Sorabji wrote that it was 'too familiar one is tempted to say, for most people think of Alkan, indeed only know him, as the composer of "Le Vent", as they know only the Sibelius of the Valse Triste or Finlandia'. For Liszt's taste, 'Le vent' 'is the most Romantic of the three. By means of an uninterrupted explosion of chromatic semiquavers, the composer has managed wonderfully to bring to life the effects of those sustained winds which blow for days on end, making the forest heather and grasses moan monotonously. One can almost hear the rain trickling down the oak trees' trunks, and, in great reverence, one can listen to the tune which floats above all these subdued murmurings, like the song of the lover or the poet as he looks upon Nature's sorrow yet without feeling that sadness in himself because he holds in his heart the gentle glow of a memory or a hope'. Larry Sitsky adds: 'A "normal" Romantic would seize the opportunity for whipping up a veritable gale; in Alkan's piece, the rise and fall of the wind is monotonously regular, the melody heard through it pathetic rather than heroic'. (Alkan was to come back to this meteorological theme in the first of the twelve Etudes dans tous les tons mineurs Op 39, entitled 'Comme le vent' - a work which in Sorabji's opinion was far less successful.) The score is pretty striking in itself: the page is dominated by a huge pile-up of notes - repetitive scales of demisemiquavers - and the visual impact is almost as striking as the impact the music makes as sound. We have the same sort of effect in some of Chopin's Etudes. The middle section is undoubtedly the most lyrical and the most beautiful; the combination of tremolos and chromatic scales flashing in the left hand evokes Chasse-neige, the last of Liszt's Etudes d'exйcution transcendante, without giving us a clue as to who influenced whom.

'Morte', in E flat minor, is the most premonitory of the three works. Sorabji believes that this is the 'most remarkable piece of the collection … "Morte" is a moving and tragic elegy, a funereal song, in which the composer introduces the Dies Irae, that marvellous theme which has for so long haunted and fascinated so many of the great masters of music. The work is bursting with extraordinary daring - technical, pianistic and harmonic - and its close is as weirdly uncanny as it is audacious and original'. In contrast to Sorabji's words, it is this third piece that finds Liszt at his most scathing: 'In the ensemble of this piece, which contains some truly lovely things, it seemed to us that M Alkan had too little concern for detail. The transition passages, thrown like bridges between one idea and another […] have been somewhat neglected. It is evident that the composer views them as being of mediocre importance. And that is a mistake. One should never assume that certain sections will benefit through a neglect of others'.

On listening to the work, however, this criticism seems somewhat ill-fitting. The music begins with bare fifths in the piano's lower register, and then the theme of 'Dies irae' comes soaring over the top, until a savage torrent of chords adds a certain violence to the desolation. There follows a magnificent lament, leading into a florid cadence, and then on to a passage in which a repetitive B flat uncannily heralds 'Le Gibet' from Gaspard de la nuit by Ravel - who was familiar with Alkan's music. The next section, which Liszt labelled 'Presto finale', is a violent expression of revolt and exasperation which then returns to the mood of despair with which the piece began. 'Morte' certainly reminds one of music by Berlioz, Mussorgsky and Ravel - but it equally well heralds the best of Alkan's compositions still to come: 'Promйthйe enchaоnй' from the Grande Sonate, Op 33, La Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer from the Preludes, Op 31, Le Tambour bat aux champs, Op 51 No 2, for example.

The absence of any indication of performance markings in the score could be regarded as a sort of homage to the person to whom it was dedicated. It does not help the task of the interpreter. In general, this collection represents a gauntlet thrown down to all pianists. Raymond Lewenthal rightly insisted on the need to play Alkan's music strictly a tempo at the designated speeds and with total conviction, since this is not music which comes to life simply by reading it. Rather than taking the view of Ronald Smith, who claims that the technical expertise required to play Opus 15 is disproportionate to the musical rewards, let us listen to Marc-Andrй Hamelin who, in his true re-creation of the work, takes initiatives which transform these pages.

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Grande Sonate D-dur op.33 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002ZW4/thealkansocie-21)

Программная фортепианная соната D-dur,идея которой перекликается с написанной несколькими годами позднее сонатой h-moll Ференца Листа.Однако формальное воплощение идеи Фауст/Мефистофель-а у Алькана добавляется еще целый ряд фрейдистских заморочек :)))-совершенно разное.

Тут,что называется,без b3 не разобратся. :alcohol: :))))))

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Этюды op.76 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002ZVE/thealkansocie-21)

Мое самое любимое сочинение Алькана.

Первый этюд-великолепная "Фантазия" для левой руки solo-своеобразный "конспект" леворучного концерта Равеля.

Второй-"Вступление,Вариации и Финал"-20-минутное "испытание огнем".

Третий-самый прелестный.Вот откуда Шопен украл идею финала своей Второй сонаты!!!

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Концертная соната для виолончели и фортепиано (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005OB23/thealkansocie-21)

По идее,если бы была более известна значила бы для виолончелистов то же,что для пианистов Рах3 :) .

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Ну я уж не говорю о мелких шалостях,типа "Le Chemin de Fer" или "Пожар в соседней деревне".

Кстати,Eugene, а Вам не нравится Концерт для фортепиано solo?

[Нина]

Не, я не согласна...
Третий Бетховена с каденцией Алькана - это не самая клевая вещь. На меня больше производят впечатления его собственные произведения:) Так что вот вам в моем лице еще одна фанатка Алькана. А то кто-то сетовал, что тут фанатов мало ;)

[Eugene]

Ну я уж не говорю о мелких шалостях,типа "Le Chemin de Fer" или "Пожар в соседней деревне".

Кстати,Eugene, а Вам не нравится Концерт для фортепиано solo?
Нет :oops:

[Ната]

:readme: :solution: Господа, я побежала в Archambault за дисками Алькана.
ЗЫ. Господа пианисты, прошу простить мою необразованность. :skripka:

[Gtn]

Спасибо огромное г-ну Ларошу за информацию.
Музыка действительно очень интересная, как рассказы про Шерлока Холмса, и примерно такой же художественной ценности.
Тут и тайна и сюжет...
... что нашел - прослушал очень заинтересованно. И ноты кое-какие. Играть чисто пианистически - приятно, руки радуются.

[Anonymous]

Gtn, присоединяюсь!! :)

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Ой,приятно-то как! :)

[Дима]

Кто хочет послушать Алькана в крутом исполнении:

http://forums.lifanovsky.com/viewtopic.php?p=21895

[regards]

Огдон???!!! :eyecrazy:

[Дмитрий Ларош]

:lol:

Знаете, в среде просвещенных Алькановедов, говорить хорошо о записи Огдона это все равно что .... ну... :oops:
Короче, полнейший моветон. :)

Конечно, она представляет собой интерес с исторической точки зрения, но...

Не хочется говорить плохо о лучшем исполнителе Второго Концерта Листа... (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005Y33B/qid=1065201692/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-0860348-9604161?v=glance&s=classical&n=507846)

8)

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Господа, чтобы предотвратить возможные недоразумения, я хотел бы подчеркнуть, что речь идет о записи, выпущенной на лейбле "BBC Legends" в 2002 году.

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00005Y33B.02.MZZZZZZZ.jpg

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No 1,S124. Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No 2,S125. 12 Etudes d'exйcution transcendante,S139 - No. 11, Harmonies du soir Mephisto Waltz No 1, 'Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke,S514. Grande Fantaisie de bravoure sur `La Clochette' de,S420.
John Ogdon
BBC Symphony Orchestra; Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Constantin Silvestri; Colin Davis

BBC Music BBCL4089-2 (73 minutes : ADD)

[regards]

ДЛ второй раз заставляет меня взять академический отпуск. 2 Лист с Огдоном? - А чем чёрт не шутит. Я как-то никогда не задумывался о лучших и худших, но 2 Шопена наводит на размышления.

Текущая гипотеза: а возможен ли "лучший" 2 Листа вообще? Впрочем, не хочу играть в многозначительность, дайте подумать и послушать :)

[Дима]

:lol:

Знаете, в среде просвещенных Алькановедов, говорить хорошо о записи Огдона это все равно что .... ну... :oops:
Короче, полнейший моветон. :)

Конечно, она представляет собой интерес с исторической точки зрения, но...

Ну извиняюсь, я пока ещё не алканоид :) (хотя послушал бы ещё), и у меня других записей этого композитора нет, чтобы сравнивать - представление же оно о музыке даёт. Исполнение уж точно незаурядное. Третья часть концерта мне нравится, правда сильно она смахивает на 2 венгерскую рапсодию Листа.

[Дмитрий Ларош]

Третья часть концерта мне нравится, правда сильно она смахивает на 2 венгерскую рапсодию Листа.

А Вы слушали именно эту запись? Иначе игра не стоит с... :)

[Дима]

Третья часть концерта мне нравится, правда сильно она смахивает на 2 венгерскую рапсодию Листа.

А Вы слушали именно эту запись? Иначе игра не стоит с... :)

Вы наверное читаете с конца. Я тут разглагольствуюсь о концерте Алькана для фортепиано соло. А вы о чём?
Так и хочется спросить, в чём вы находите моветон в этой записи
с Огдоном:
Alkan: Etudes dans les tons mineurs, Op. 39 – Concerto (from RCA USA LSC3192. Recorded 1968).