A Blockbuster
Twenty years ago I thought Alkan was an international highway. Then came the first wave of the Alkan record inundation. It appears to have begun in the mid-1960s with a recording of the symphony for piano solo by a pianist identified in my old Schwanns only as "Bracey." (He seems to have come and gone between Artist Issues.) Then for a few years the spate or freshet or whatever it was was dominated by Raymond Lewenthal, though there were representations by Michael Ponti, Ronald Smith, the Mirecourt Trio, and (on MHS 1344W), Bernard Ringiessen. There were few or no new examples after 1970 and a decade later the Schwann catalog (at least the one I just consulted) had only one example surviving.
I was never sure whether the upsurge really represented the rediscovery of a forgotten and/or neglected master, or an attempt to satisfy the taste of that era for the outlandish. Then about a year ago it seems to have started all over again. Apparently deleted recordings reappeared along with new ones and Arabesque (Caedmon Records' musical branch) began releasing Ronald Smith records in something ambitiously termed "the Alkan Project." And now we have a disc whose annotator breathes a fervent prayer: "Ce disque puisse-t-il marquer l'aube de la découverte du génie d'Alkan!" (May this record signal the dawn of the discovery of Alkan's genius!)
Alkan should have been a genius: he was born in 1813, a vintage year that produced, among others, Dargomizhky, Verdi, and Wagner. Yclept Charles Henri Valentin, he was the eldest son of a Jewish family named Morhange, and nothing I've consulted seems to want to tell me why the name change. His father ran a school for children of his faith. All four of the sons entered on musical careers.
Charles-Valentin exhibited such extraordinary ability that at the age of six he was admitted to the Paris Conservatory, and by the time he was approaching his majority he was the musical rage of the salons. His subsequent obscurity came through every fault of his own. At 20 he visited London, but found the experience too traumatic and never, as far as I can tell, left Paris again. At 23 he gave up his teaching (part-time) at the conservatory. Around 1838 he went into seclusion.
The trouble was apparently a pathological shyness. He was both erudite and brilliant and numbered many of the great of his time among his intimates, including Chopin, Liszt, George Sand, Victor Hugo, the painter Delacroix, and the novelist Alexandre Dumas pere. In fact his social contacts provided him with a son known as Elie-Miriam Delaborde in 1839. He also took in a few pupils.
Occasionally Alkan would emerge into the daylight for a few concerts, as he did in 1844 and again nine years later. Finally at 60 he inaugurated an annual concert series which he kept up until he died, but on such occasions he almost never played his own music - which he went on composing as though it were going out of style, which it emphatically was. He also devoted much time to his health. Perversely he yearned for some token of national recognition, but when, one afternoon, a delegation arrived to announce that he had been tapped for the Legion d'Honneur, he had them dismissed on the excuse that M. Alkan was digesting.
Supposedly he spent his latter years in devoted study of his religion, and it used to be said that he died (at 75) when he pulled a bookcase over on himself trying to reach down a Talmud; later the object of his interest became merely "a book" and most recently the instrument of his demise has been described as "an umbrella stand."
Alkan's music, mostly for the piano, has been likened to that of both Liszt and Berlioz. Though he wrote a lot of the small sort of pieces in fashion in his day, his major works are blockbusters in both size and technical demands - another fact that has accounted for their long neglect.
The Grande sonate of 1847 is typical of both tendencies. It is abstractly programmatic, depicting the decades of maturity (from 20 to 50) in a man's life, the tempi running from very fast through rather fast and slowly to extremely slow.
The longest movement, the second, subtitled Quasi Faust, is a miniature tone poem in itself, with contrasting Faustian and Mephistophelean themes. The third depicts a happy household -- something Alkan never knew -- and the fourth Prometheus bound (whether by age, circumstance, or domesticity Is not clear).
Young M. Reach's version at almost 36 minutes is nearly seven minutes faster than Ronald Smith's. Though Reach's fingerwork is dazzling, I assume he omits repeats, especially in the finale which is faster by more than four minutes.
