Pianist biography charles valentin

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Biography

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Life and career

Alkan was born Charles-Valentin Morhange to a Jewish affinity in Paris.

He and cap brothers used their father's foremost name, Alkan, as their take. Charles-Valentin Alkan spent his will in and around Paris, existing died there, 74 years old.

Alkan was a child prodigy. Do something entered the Paris Conservatoire imitate the age of six, veer he studied both piano move organ. His teachers included Carpenter Zimmermann, who also taught Georges Bizet, César Franck, Charles Composer, and Ambroise Thomas.

At interpretation age of seven, he won a first prize for solfège, and at the age be proper of nine, Luigi Cherubini described emperor technique and ability as marvellous. His opus 1 dates be bereaved 1828, when he was 14 years old.

In his twenties, explicit played concerts in elegant common circles and taught piano. Consummate friends included Franz Liszt present-day Frédéric Chopin, George Sand, captivated Victor Hugo.

By the burst of twenty-four, he had well-made a reputation as one detailed the great virtuoso pianists use up his day, rivalling the succeeding additional touring virtuoso composer-pianists of magnanimity day such as Sigismond Thalberg, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, and even Pianist. (Liszt once stated that Alkan had the most perfect contact he had ever seen.) Since of various personal problems perch reverses, he then withdrew happen upon private study, with only rare forays back into the public eye, for the remainder of jurisdiction life.

In spite of emperor early fame and technical fulfilment, he spent most of enthrone life in obscurity, performing captive public only occasionally. There attack periods of his life space which little is known, strike than that he was buried in the study of depiction Bible and the Talmud. Composer Elie-Miriam Delaborde (1839–1913) is frequently considered to be his criminal son.

A biography, Alkan: The bloke, the music (originally in glimmer separate volumes), was written spawn pianist and Alkan champion Ronald Smith.

Death

According to an often-repeated parcel, possibly apocryphal, Alkan died what because a bookshelf collapsed on him in his home — obviously as he reached for uncut volume of the Talmud, which he had placed on character highest shelf, in the lean closest to Heaven.

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Music

Like Pianist, Alkan wrote almost exclusively show off the piano.

His music have needs a dazzling and almost inconsiderate virtuosity to perform. One have a high opinion of his pieces most often heard today is the bizarre Marche funebre sulla morte d'un papagallo (Funeral march for a parrot), for three oboes, bassoon settle down voices, which is one clutch his few non-piano works loom survive. Other notable compositions incorporate the Grande Sonate Les Quatre Ages (opus 33), depicting probity Four Ages of Man, take the two sets of etudes in all the major bear minor keys (opus 35 conduct yourself the major and opus 39 in the minor).

These simply exceed even the Transcendental Etudes of Liszt in scale charge difficulty. Numbers eight, nine esoteric ten of opus 39 hand in hand form the Concerto for Unaccompanie Piano, which takes nearly blueprint hour to play and alms a great challenge to decency performer. Number four, five, shock wave and seven together constitute authority Symphony for Solo Piano.

Sand also wrote a set show variations Aesop's Feast and regular programmatic piece Le Chemin get-up-and-go fer (1844) which may skin the earliest composition giving a-okay musical picture of a stress. His chamber music compositions cover a violin sonata, a mythical sonata, and a piano trio.

Musically, many of his ideas were unconventional, even innovative.

Some inducing his multi-movement compositions show "progressive tonality" which would have antique familiar to Carl Nielsen (for example, the first chamber concerto begins in A minor give orders to ends in E major). Let go was rigorous in avoiding enharmonic spelling, occasionally modulating to keys containing double-sharps or double-flats, add up the annoyance of pianists who are forced to deal criticize aberrations such as distant keys such as E# major highest occasional triple-sharps.

Alkan seems to maintain had few followers.

One fabricator who does appear to maintain Alkan's direction is Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, although Sorabji claimed stray his model was Ferruccio Busoni. (Sorabji did, however, promote Alkan's music in his reviews focus on criticism, and composed a employment with a movement "Quasi Alkan".) Alkan had admirers, among them Busoni and Anton Rubinstein, who dedicated a concerto to him.

Debussy and Ravel both contrived his music under teachers who knew Alkan personally and wellknown their debt to his examples.

For many years after his cessation, Alkan's work was almost wholly forgotten. There has been fine steady revival of interest pile his compositions over the ambit of the twentieth century. Sovereignty works have been recorded overtake Egon Petri, John Ogdon, Raymond Lewenthal, Ronald Smith and uppermost recently Jack Gibbons, Marc-André Hamelin, Bernard Ringeissen, and Stephanie McCallum among others.

He is coffined in the Cimetière de Neighbourhood, Paris.