Alkan's Trois Grandes Études, Op 76, are considered a "Jovian manifesto of keyboard technique" and are compared to the works of Bach, Paganini, and Ysaÿe for unaccompanied strings due to their "single-handed challenge."
Recording & Production
This album was recorded live during a concert series called "Virtuoso Romantics" at Wigmore Hall, London, in June 1994.
Compositional Technique
Charles-Valentin Alkan, a French composer and pianist, believed transcription was an art form with a rich future, focusing on making everything heard and knowing how to highlight or obscure parts.
Composition History
Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, Romanza, was completed between April and August 1830 and was inspired by his tender feelings for a young soprano, Konstancja Gladkowska.
Composer Biography
Ferruccio Busoni, an Italian composer and pianist, was largely self-taught as a pianist and was admired by figures like Sibelius and Reger, embodying the "complete musician."
Composer Biography
Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev, a Russian composer and pianist, was deeply in love with Chopin's music from boyhood, leading him to arrange and re-orchestrate several of Chopin's works.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Busoni believed that transcriptions, while suiting another's ideas to the transcriber's personality, do not destroy the original work, and considered a performance itself a form of transcription.
