Charles-Valentin Alkan - Étude Alla-Barbaro (Viner)

Описание: Mark Viner, piano

Courtesy of Piano Classics. Purchase the album here:
https://www.piano-classics.com/articles/a/...

The discovery of the Etude Alla-Barbaro came as a complete surprise when it was stumbled upon by the French-Canadian pianist, Marc-André Hamelin (b.1961) on the 14th August, 1995, within the archive of Raymond Lewenthal (1923-1988) held at the International Piano Archive in Maryland, USA. There exists no catalogue listing of it nor a single mention of it anywhere yet it was, indeed, published. The copy found among Lewenthal’s effects was an extremely grainy photostat of the original edition accompanied by an insightful typewritten preface from Lewenthal himself with which he had evidently intended to republish the work. This photostat is the sole testimony to the work’s existence: the original has not resurfaced nor do we know where Lewenthal made the photostat. The publisher of this first edition reads as Nowinski on the title page with a further seller’s stamp reading Th. Nowinski | Graveur | De Musique. We can be confident this was a certain Thomas Nowinski, born in the palatinate of Krakov, who came to Paris and had some success as an engraver having developed a novel printing process by which he transferred the printed score to the page via sheets of zinc rather than tin thus cutting costs substantially. He later published an album for piano and voice entitled Union musicale which was issued in instalments and it is almost certain that the Etude Alla-Barbaro formed part of its contents. Aside from the this, the ambiguous inclusion of ‘No.5’ at the bottom of the title page suggests the piece was published as part of a series. Whether there might have been accompanying works by Alkan remains to be seen but the possibility is a tantalising one. Quite why Lewenthal never succeeded in republishing the piece we don’t know but, happily, it was reengraved by Billaudot in 2000 and, more recently, by Muse Press, comprising Lewenthal’s entertaining and insightful preface in 2019.

Connoisseurs of Alkan’s music will already be familiar with his excursions into the barbaro genre: the fifth of the Douze Etudes dans tous les tons majeurs, Op.35 (1848), Allegro barbaro, also in the key of F major, and the finale of the Concerto for solo piano, Allegretto alla barbaresca, which forms the tenth of the Douze Etudes dans tous les tons mineurs, Op.39 (1857) being famous examples, yet, as Alkan seldom repeats himself, this particular foray behaves like neither. Its principal material is fashioned from chords alternating between the hands where the melody is passed between the thumbs and clad with bristling chordal acciaccature: a device which, Lewenthal points out, was used in an earlier piece entitled L’hallali – (a whoop or hunting cry) which forms the ninth piece, ascribed to the month of September, in the set of Les Mois, 12 morceaux caractéristiques (1838), later misleadingly listed as Op.74 by subsequent publishers. The other parallel Lewenthal draws is the second of Béla Bartók’s (1881-1945) Burlesques, Sz.47 (1912) entitled ‘a little tipsy…’ and again, this is intriguing as given the extreme rarity of this piece it is highly unlikely that Bartók was ever aware of its existence yet witness the effect the other more famous contender of the barbaro genre, the Allegro barbaro from the Douze Etudes dans tous les tons majeurs, Op.35, clearly had on him when, in 1911, he came to pen his own Allegro barbaro, Sz.49 (1918) after having undoubtedly heard the piece from Ferrucio Busoni (1866-1924) in the latter’s Berlin recitals.

Opening with an introductory seven bars and with the tempo marking allegro, it launches into its main theme, marked énergique et résolu – (energetic and resolute). A sudden lurch back to the motoric ‘hunting’ rhythm of the opening signals a change in character as coruscating right hand figurations intensify the rhetoric. Arching to a blazing reinstatement of the main theme and underpinned by the ever pulverising ‘hunting’ rhythm of the left hand, it navigates some raucous seven-note clusters before a sequence of unrelated ideas spirals out of control. A clamorous salvo of descending octaves leads to a brief return to the writing of the opening before a mock-military clarion fans out into an ascending arpeggio figuration of blind octaves anchoring, at their summit, on the dominant note of the home key before petering out in their descent. A return to the main theme lands on a false chord of G flat major with the added dissonance of a seventh before it rounds itself off resolutely, its bristling chordal acciaccature screamingly displaced at a distance of two octaves. Brash, vociferous, and utterly uncompromising, it will find little sympathy among those seeking a cosier breed of romanticism yet it remains utterly arresting, unique and decades ahead of its time.