Charles-Valentin Alkan is one of the most intriguing and enigmatic composers in the history of music. Born in Paris in 1813, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire age six, won numerous prizes and quickly established himself as one of France’s leading pianists. A colleague of Liszt and one-time next-door neighbour to his friend, Chopin, he was a darling of the salons until a series of professional setbacks led to a breakdown of sorts. The death of Chopin in 1849 was something of a last straw and in 1853, Alkan withdrew for some 20 years, eking out life as a total recluse.
It was during this period that much of his finest music was composed, a body of work that if recorded might stretch to 18-or-so discs. The piano works are notoriously virtuosic and often eccentrically conceived, attracting the attention of daredevil performers, most notably Marc-André Hamelin. But where most have restricted themselves to a handful of discs that only scratch the surface of Alkan’s oeuvre, Mark Viner is going for the Full Monty, as it were.
The British pianist’s most recent release – volume seven – looks at Alkan’s earliest works, nine substantial solo pieces spanning the years 1825 (when the composer was just 12!) to around 1834. It opens with the Variations sur un thème de Steibelt, Op. 1, a work Alkan deployed in concert to showcase his prodigious talents for a number of years. It does the same for Viner, his technique, articulation, phrasing and sheer panache dazzling the ears. After a gentle, elegant start, the six variations present a pianistic minefield, with rapid scales and wide leaps – the third is almost entirely in octaves – ending in a vertiginous coda. It’s not the subtlest music, but as a calling card it would certainly have got the teenage Alkan noticed. It does the same for Viner here, whose playing is fast, flawless and utterly fearless.
The Les omnibus, variations, Op. 2 are even wilder, a nod to a fleet of horsedrawn coaches that plied their trade in the Paris of the day “their mechanical horns trumpeting fanfares through the streets.” Viner plunges in, enjoying the galloping rhythms and hallooing bugles in a madcap frenzy of fingering. It’s a similar story in the whirligig Il était un p’tit homme, Rondoletto, Op. 3, based on a French nursery rhyme. But while Viner is technically faultless in these finger-busting test-pieces, he can also be thoughtfully poetic, witness the limpid grace he brings to the opening of the Rondo Brillant, Op. 4.
Some of the loveliest music here comes in the form of the operatic paraphrase, that pianistic staple of the age. Variations à la vielle sur l’air chanté par Mme. Persiani dans L’elisir d’amore de G. Donizetti is a peach, never mind that it’s mislabelled as the themes come from Ugo, Conte di Parigi instead! Viner brings out the music’s charm and songful lyricism, his pianissimo playing a special delight. The Variations on Bellini’s La tremenda ultrice spada from I Capuleti e i Montecchi are as good as anything the genre has to offer, and delivered with suitable swagger.
The final works here begin to show the quirky side of the composer to come. The Variations quasi fantaisie sur une barcarolle Napolitaine from the Six Morceaux Caractéristiques, Op. 16, opens with a chromatic scramble that could only be Alkan, while the Rondeau chromatique, Op. 12, the disc’s most harmonically adventurous music, revels in complex counterpoint.
Throughout it all, Viner is the ideal guide, aided by a crisp, clean acoustic that allows you to savour his every breathtaking hemi-demi-semi quaver. The six previous releases are similarly impressive (and often revelatory), making this a series well worth investing in.
Composer: Alkan
Works: Early Works & Juvenilia
Performer: Mark Viner p
Label: Piano Classics PCL10298
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