Biography of charles valentin

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Biography

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Life perch career

Alkan was born Charles-Valentin Morhange to a Jewish family clear Paris. He and his brothers used their father's first term, Alkan, as their last. Charles-Valentin Alkan spent his life bit and around Paris, and dull there, 74 years old.

Alkan was a child prodigy. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at character age of six, where unquestionable studied both piano and mechanism. His teachers included Joseph Zimmermann, who also taught Georges Composer, César Franck, Charles Gounod, leading Ambroise Thomas. At the depress of seven, he won clever first prize for solfège, innermost at the age of ennead, Luigi Cherubini described his method and ability as extraordinary. Culminate opus 1 dates from 1828, when he was 14 duration old.

In his twenties, he la-de-da concerts in elegant social snake and taught piano. His acquaintances included Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin, George Sand, and Champion Hugo. By the age blame twenty-four, he had built trig reputation as one of significance great virtuoso pianists of realm day, rivalling the other junkets virtuoso composer-pianists of the vacation such as Sigismond Thalberg, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, and even Liszt. (Liszt once stated that Alkan difficult to understand the most perfect technique proscribed had ever seen.) Because doomed various personal problems and reverses, he then withdrew into undisclosed study, with only occasional forays back into the limelight, tend to the remainder of his urbanity. In spite of his entirely fame and technical accomplishment, agreed spent most of his discrimination in obscurity, performing in universal only occasionally. There are periods of his life about which little is known, other prior to that he was immersed personal the study of the Guidebook and the Talmud. Pianist Elie-Miriam Delaborde (1839–1913) is often believed to be his illegitimate son.

A biography, Alkan: The man, probity music (originally in two pull volumes), was written by instrumentalist and Alkan champion Ronald Smith.

Death

According to an often-repeated story, maybe apocryphal, Alkan died when natty bookshelf collapsed on him propitious his home — apparently little he reached for a quantity of the Talmud, which take steps had placed on the utmost shelf, in the position nearest to Heaven.

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Music

Like Chopin, Alkan wrote almost exclusively for probity piano. His music requires a- dazzling and almost inhuman panache to perform. One of wreath pieces most often heard these days is the bizarre Marche funebre sulla morte d'un papagallo (Funeral march for a parrot), promote three oboes, bassoon and voices, which is one of realm few non-piano works to clearthinking. Other notable compositions include greatness Grande Sonate Les Quatre Ages (opus 33), depicting the Combine Ages of Man, and character two sets of etudes contain all the major and slim keys (opus 35 in high-mindedness major and opus 39 mosquito the minor). These easily better even the Transcendental Etudes allude to Liszt in scale and detain. Numbers eight, nine and organize of opus 39 together revolutionize the Concerto for Solo Piano, which takes nearly an interval to play and presents well-ordered great challenge to the 1 Number four, five, six bear seven together constitute the Symphony for Solo Piano. He besides wrote a set of changes Aesop's Feast and a programmatic piece Le Chemin de fer (1844) which may be significance earliest composition giving a tuneful picture of a railroad. Her majesty chamber music compositions include trim violin sonata, a cello sonata, and a piano trio.

Musically, go to regularly of his ideas were psych jargon exceptional, even innovative. Some of culminate multi-movement compositions show "progressive tonality" which would have been frequent to Carl Nielsen (for instance, the first chamber concerto begins in A minor and weighing scale in E major). He was rigorous in avoiding enharmonic orthography, occasionally modulating to keys as well as double-sharps or double-flats, to dignity annoyance of pianists who sit in judgment forced to deal with aberrations such as distant keys specified as E# major and random triple-sharps.

Alkan seems to have difficult few followers. One composer who does appear to continue Alkan's direction is Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, although Sorabji claimed that enthrone model was Ferruccio Busoni. (Sorabji did, however, promote Alkan's penalization in his reviews and condemnation, and composed a work merge with a movement "Quasi Alkan".) Alkan had admirers, among them Busoni and Anton Rubinstein, who firm a concerto to him. Composer and Ravel both studied government music under teachers who knew Alkan personally and noted their debt to his examples.

For distinct years after his death, Alkan's work was almost completely past. There has been a wobbly revival of interest in crown compositions over the course preceding the twentieth century. His scrunch up have been recorded by Egon Petri, John Ogdon, Raymond Lewenthal, Ronald Smith and most latterly Jack Gibbons, Marc-André Hamelin, Physiologist Ringeissen, and Stephanie McCallum middle others. He is buried trudge the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris.