Happy 200th birthday, Charles-Valentin Alkan!

[orangesodaking]

Happy birthday to one of the most influential musical figures in my life. Alkan was a great composer whose music faded into obscurity due to a life of obscurity, and whose rediscovery is starting to snowball.

I'll share this for anyone's listening pleasure.

[cabbynum]

Happy birthday to one of the most influential musical figures in my life. Alkan was a great composer whose music faded into obscurity due to a life of obscurity, and whose rediscovery is starting to snowball.

I'll share this for anyone's listening pleasure.

I actually got my local radio station to have an alkan hour!!!! Sadly I won't be in town for it... But I am very happy they agreed to doing it! I don't know if they'll use what I wrote, but I wrote a nice anecdote for each piece!
Alkan is new to my life and I love him! I can never decide on a favorite composer but he is always in my top 5

[theholygideons]

happy birthday

[indianajo]

Since I don't own a computer/browser capable of video, I had never heard Alkan pieces until today.  Today 12/1 WUOL-FM Pipe Dreams played all Alkan music. This was in honor of his birthday.   He wrote some servicable organ pieces IMHO.  In particular one piece was written for, and played on, the pedal piano.  It was an 1858 Erato or something, and the bass notes were nice.  But the treble notes had some pitch instability when struck. 
I might have bought one of those had one ended up on the used market newspapers like Greensheet, but after a 29 year search, I bought a 25 pedal Hammond organ.  It has nice tone, after I replaced 71 electrolytic capacitors.  One "percussion" (attack), glock, can be adjusted to sound like a Rhodes electric "piano" but it doesn't have touch volume.  Mine was all made in Chicago in 1968, to fit my taste in worker benefits. 

[ahinton]

Since I don't own a computer/browser capable of video, I had never heard Alkan pieces until today.  Today 12/1 WUOL-FM Pipe Dreams played all Alkan music. This was in honor of his birthday.   He wrote some servicable organ pieces IMHO.  In particular one piece was written for, and played on, the pedal piano.  It was an 1858 Erato or something, and the bass notes were nice.  But the treble notes had some pitch instability when struck.

Alkan is known to have writtenonly one short piece for organ, but he did write quite a lot for pédalier and 2 out of a planned 3-CD set of all these pieces have been recorded on the organ by Kevin Bowyer (who will record the third CD at some point); they're on the Toccata label (a UK company).

Best,

Alistair