Charles-Valentin Alkan - Étude WoO from Encyclopédie du Pianiste Compositeur (Viner)

Описание: Mark Viner, piano

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This Etude appeared in 1840 in the second part of a large three-part publication entitled Encyclopédie du Pianiste Compositeur by Alkan’s former professor, Pierre Zimmerman (1785-1853), comprising elementary instruction, exercises and études together with theoretical guidance. The second part comprises music old and new together with études from the author himself, Alkan, Carl Czerny (1791-1857), Emile Prudent (1817-1863) and Henri Ravina (1818-1906). Zimmerman could not possibly have passed up the opportunity to commission a new étude from his favourite pupil for inclusion and Alkan’s contribution to the set is, by far, the most striking. From beginning to end, it is wrought almost entirely from an interlocking chordal device, the rhythm of which might best be described as a paradiddle which, at the tempo marking of allegro molto, makes for a rather bruising study in chord playing.

In the key of A minor, the paradiddle rhythm is established from the outset with an introductory dominant note hammered out between the hands before the theme gets underway. A contrasting central section in the tonic major offers brief respite where a truncated version of the paradiddle rhythm obsesses over a dominant pedal note before a chordal iteration of the introductory passage signals the reprise, short-circuiting to a brief coda and spurring the étude on to its clamorous close. The effect of the thing is so screamingly outrageous and, like so much of Alkan’s music, so far ahead of its time, that it would be better suited to an Ibizan rave in the twenty-first century rather than the Paris salon of the nineteenth and, indeed, the present writer knows of not one person who hasn’t doubled over in amazement and incredulity upon hearing it.

Mark Viner

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