Alkan's popularity is growing. I never heard of him before I started posting in this forum. And his music is absolutely some of the most beautiful, quirky, and difficult works in the piano repetory. The last point, difficulty, is probably one reason he isn't performed very often - he's really difficult. But he's also something we can strive for, to be able to play such difficult but beautiful music.
Mozart's popularity are in only a few of his works. The rest he wrote was crap. To us, his piano works are very easy and readily accessible to many children. His simplicity allows us to enjoy his music as children and as we grow older, as adults.
But Alkan's music is not something a child can pluck out. And since he wrote almost exclusively for the piano, the listening audience is already limited, similar to Chopin.
Chopin is easy to play, comparably. He is certainly easy to listen to since he's all right hand. Two voices make people go quesy from all the "noise". His melodies aren't bad either and as such, he is still very popular.
Overated composer for the piano? Mozart. But he's popular. Underated composer? Alkan. He's too difficult to play. Difficulty is a problem for many pianists. Some learning pianists will not like pieces because they are having a terrible time being able to play it. They do not discern a difference between difficulty to play a piece and listening to the piece. This is Alkan's downfall, at least to little children. But that's okay, they can't even reach an octave.
How many "easy" pieces has Alkan written? A couple. Namely a few of his Op. 63 Esquisses and his Op. 65-6 Barcorolle.
How many "difficult" pieces has Alkan written? Everything else.
But what about Liszt? He's popular and also difficult to play. Good point. So perhaps it's not just difficulty that makes someone obscure. Liszt performed and did it often, playing some of his most difficult works as well as pleasing works. His Hungarian Rhapsody #2, his opera transcriptions, etc. were quite popular during his time. Because of this, his works were able to spread around. His looks certainly did not prevent it. Because he defined virtuosity pour le piano, and the pleasing works for it, and was able to perform and spread it, he became immortalized in our history.
Alkan was not Liszt. He did not perform very often. He went into seclusion while Liszt's popularity became greater and greater. His seclusion from society was partly because he took a back seat to Liszt's fame and talent. So his presence went unacknowledged for a long time during his life. The only ones who could play his works? Himself and a few others. But his popularity soon died with his death.
Only several decades later was he rediscovered. And since then, his works have been shown to the public and have gained acceptance by some pianists who have spread his works around on LP and CD or any other recording format. The audience, more importantly, has accepted Alkan. And his popularity will soon grow to the ranks of Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven.
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Was Schumann an anti-semite? He gave Alkan very bad reviews. You know them Germans, always raggin on the Jews. But he liked Liszt, but he was a Jew. But wasn't Wagner a Nazi? And didn't he marry Cosimma, Liszt's daughter? But the Jewish line can only be passed down through the woman, not the man...
Topic: Alkan Craze