Charles-Valentin Alkan

[stevie]

when discussing how underplayed alkan's works are, consider just how many performances there are of liszt's sonata for every performance of alkan's.

it has to be at least 100 to 1, or maybe even 1000.

now is alkan's work, 1000 times less great than liszt's? no

i like the endings of both sonatas, very unique

the liszt with the stunningly beautiful and tranquil(if played right) high chords held, then the final spooky final note - which harkens back to the opening, hard to define exactly what it means, but it is a very uncomfortable and disturbing finish.

alkan's whole final movement is about suffering death, and the end of it is quite stunning, the huge crescendo and final grasps, silenced and echoed by the very last, almost silent chords, the subject of the sonata's final heart beats.

wikid sheet.

[maxreger]

the problem is that the grande sonate isnt on the same level as the B minor as far as use of form and harmonic means...

it doesnt push the sonata as a form onward, so there is nothing for it to influence in that sense... it might have influenced people more from a technical stand point if it had been played more, or people would have found it beautiful, etc.

[stevie]

the grande sonate was also composed before the liszt sonata, is the alkan sonata not greater than chopin's sonatas?

alkan's sonata makes chopin's attempts seem a bit sheet

[panic]

stevie, when making that comparison (three posts above) don't forget that the Grande Sonate is a higher mountain to climb, much harder to play, than the B minor sonata. It's tragic that it hasn't received as much attention as it deserves even for being very technically difficult. There seems to be this invisible curtain in pianism that Islamey is the hardest mainstream piece to play, and after that you should go back and start learning cliche piano concertos and the like. Too few realize that possibly the greatest non-conventional sonata ever created is behind that curtain.

max, in my opinion the Grande Sonate is actually a great deal more inventive than the Liszt sonata. Instead of writing a massively long piece to convey what he wanted, Alkan re-examined traditional sonata form and came up with the ingenious idea of rearranging the movements to accomplish the same goal. The Liszt sonata still retains the allegro-andante-allegro form, albeit melded together, and the only inventiveness is that the themes are carried across (very nicely) for the entire piece instead of only within movements. The Alkan completely rethinks the sonata form itself instead of merely using it differently, and its very success lies in the fact that themes don't have to be carried across between movements for the idea of the piece to work. One could argue that the Grande Sonate is a greater intellectual achievement because Alkan realized he didn't HAVE to invent one extended movement in order to make his idea work, but rather that a brilliant rearrangement of previous traditions would do just fine. You are right about the relative influence of the two works - the Liszt has seen more - because I've never seen another sonata with movements flipped around (and that's because the Grande was finished at such an untimely date and was neglected for so long). But that doesn't mean that on it own, it wasn't a good deal more inventive than the Liszt, which I believe it was.

And the other thing is that the general idea behind Liszt's sonata is nothing new. A battle between minor and major, in which the major eventually triumphs, with a slow section in the middle. Compare that to the idea of representing four ages of a man's life, with a piece that is chock-full of visual imagery like depictions of the Devil, of God, of children playing about, and of a grandfather clock, and I think it's pretty certain that Alkan pushed the abilities of the sonata form a lot farther.

[musicsdarkangel]

I think Alkan is the most underrated anything ever.

[maxreger]

sorry panic, but you are pushing it and over simplifying things IMO.

I dont want to write a long explantion now, but... simply put, the liszt sonata is alot more then what you just claimed it to be.

Regardless, listen to what you prefer. No point in fighting with you over this, but your view on Alkan's work is a bit of a stretch for me personally.

[ryguillian]

sorry panic, but you are pushing it and over simplifying things IMO.

I dont want to write a long explantion now, but... simply put, the liszt sonata is alot more then what you just claimed it to be.

Regardless, listen to what you prefer. No point in fighting with you over this, but your view on Alkan's work is a bit of a stretch for me personally.

Also,  remember that the sonatas of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji are superior to all those mentioned above.

—Ryan

[maxy]

I believe Guy Sacré says it best: (somewhat freely translated from french)

"The best and worse, all creators can do both, but never have we seen a composer reunite both aspects so constantly as Alkan did.  In his pieces, we can hear some of the most original inventions and some of the most boring musical writing.  He lacks moderation: where a single note is enough, he puts 3 or 4, where 3 pages would state the essential, he writes 30 pages. 

Like Liszt he was a great virtuoso.  But there is a huge difference in the approach, Liszt reworked his "grandes études", took away what was useless, took away what was not playable and in doing so did create a pianism that is transcendantal in a way that it transcends the mechanical challenge to attain the state of poetry.

On the other hand, Alkan worked on making things harder, heavier... as if he needed that to satisfy some twisted sense of pride.

What can be said about his short works?  not very interesting overall, but there are exceptions.

Overall, that we like him or not, the work of Alkan must be heard and aknowledged.  By himself he covers a full chapter in the world of romantic music.  The sonate, sonatine, both sets of études can't just be ignored.  In a sky full of stars, Alkan stands out as a black star."


he goes on with a description of every piano piece by Alkan.

[stevie]

im not sure which parts he means are boring, even in the concerto's less interesting moments ; its always compelling music pushing it forward.

and i disagree about his shorter works, he was a masterful minaturist.

[panic]

Yeah. The Alkan Preludes are wonderful little works that generally use only the bare minimum to achieve what they want to convey (unlike my writing, as I have realized). It's not Alkan writing four notes for every one that is necessary; it's him writing a very careful one. In the G-major prelude, for example, a single low E-flat note near the end demolishes any sense of naivete that might be apparent in what is otherwise a very cheerful piece. It's just one note, but it gets the job done. The rest of the set is the same. Look at the last prelude (one of the best "coming to an end" pieces I've ever heard) and tell me that that is overdone.

The Alkan Concerto is packed with notes and embellishments simply because it's supposed to represent an orchestra and piano at the same time. I don't think I need to explain that one. And you don't achieve a 29-minute piece in perfect, flawless sonata-allegro form by writing 30 pages for every 3 that are necessary.
There is one mature work where he does extend stuff for too long, and that is the Scherzo-Focoso. Yes, that piece is not the best. But since about five people have ever played it, I would assume that that was not really what Guy Sacre was referring to, and in the pieces which are more likely candidates for this criticism, the extreme textures are justified.