Alkan: Paraphrases, Marches & Symphonie for Solo Piano, Op. 39

Featuring

Mark Viner
Charles Valentin Alkan

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Composer Biography

Alkan was a close friend of Frédéric Chopin, who became his next-door neighbor in the fashionable Square d'Orléans in 1842.

Composer Biography

Charles-Valentin Alkan, born in Paris in 1813, was a child prodigy who entered the Paris Conservatoire at age six and won multiple first prizes.

Composer Biography

Alkan's death in 1888 was long rumored to have been caused by a falling bookcase, a myth that has only recently been debunked.

Performer Biography

Mark Viner, the pianist on this album, won 1st prize at the Alkan-Zimmerman International Piano Competition in Athens, Greece, in 2012.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Alkan once expressed a desire to set the entire Bible to music, and his paraphrase Super flumina Babylonis, Op.52, is the only known realization of this wish.

Compositional Technique

Alkan's monumental Douze Etudes dans tous les tons mineurs, Op.39, includes a Symphony and Concerto for solo piano, conceived as studies in symphonic playing.

Composer Biography

After a professional setback and the death of Chopin, Alkan withdrew from public life for about twenty years, during which he composed much of his finest music and translated the entire Bible.