I LOVED the S&M album and around that time I was also getting into Dream Theater and Yngwie.
The quest for increased complexity and depth in music lead me to just go all out and buy Beethoven’s complete Symphonies. This would be back in mid-2000.
It was from there that I bought a few albums and listened to a lot of Classical Midi sites. They were a pretty big thing back then!
I then went on a NAXOS binge and bought hundreds of Classical CDs to sample a bit of everything.
Dust settled over time a bit and I found piano music was my favourite niche.
I bought Biret’s complete Chopin, and that was a revelation.
My discovery of Alkan didn’t come long after, my first Alkan disc was the Naxos Op.35 disc.
Alkan was an obsession of mine from 2002-2003 in particular and that was when I met Hamelin and also joined PianoForum for the first time.
I then joined ChopinFiles and subsequently had a rocky relationship there due to being foul mouthed and feeling like the classical piano world shouldn’t be so up it’s own arse and serious.
When the Chopfiles creator lost control of the forum, a guy called Nico started a new similar forum and decided at the same time to create da SDC initial forum in order - in theory - to keep me and other people who spoke in ‘mofo lingo’ out of his main forum.
Good times!
I think it went a long time ago. Don’t know what happened to that dude. Anima is probably still in touch with that Bosnian girl from there and the Chopinfiles.
My grandmother used to play quite a lot of Beethoven, Chopin and J. ‘Son’ Strauss as we drove up and down to Whistler on weekends. In my own time it was Chopin’s F-Impromptu and Rachmaninoff’s Concerti. Beethoven’s Symphonies were right there too.
Envious of those who were exposed in their youth, but it can backfire I suppose because a lot rebel against what their parents and grandparents enjoyed, respect for not conforming to that stereotype
My introduction to Alkan came from one of the Marco Polo CDs (the one with Le Chemin de Fer), and I absolutely hated it. =) I remember thinking it was just empty salon music.
What turned me around was when I bought Ogdon’s Deacon volume, which happened to have his mind blowing account of the concerto on one of the CDs. I continued with Jack Gibbons’ 2 CD set, and since then it’s practically been good night. He’s easily one of my all time favourite composers, and the first rank of great romantics simply isn’t complete without him. Or… at least I had thought he had a self-evident position there if I hadn’t understood that much of his music has its roots in misanthropy. In a way he was the Kurt Cobain of the 19th C, writing music which is tremendously powerful and stunningly original, but which will alienate part of the population since he doesn’t shy away from expressing things like voracity, mockery, defiance, misanthropy, awkwardness, contempt, exclusion and even mental illness in his music (is he the first composer in history not to fence these things out?). For this reason I can understand if it comes across as unsettling or plain odd for some people - especially a 19th C audience seeking to be entertained at the concert house.
ahahahah da mini zepp had zum 88 lezzonz back in china, ztopped aftah a yr aftah playin da hardezt zong evah at da tym, da fur elize
den 6 yrz latah, da zong da inzpired da mini-zepp to get back on da 88 wuz randomly
da GREG elfin dance
alzo i wuz vizitin da clazzikalarchivez.com where back den twuz only midi recz. zo da zeppz firzt expozha to many SDC clazzicz wuz in 100% metronomic MIDI FORM devoid of any dynamicz/rubato/interp etc
i feel zorry fo mofoz who nevah got to experience da clazzicz fo da firzt tym in diz legendary mannah
YES! Alkan was a very interesting composer. I think his output is uneven, yes, but no moreso than Liszt’s.
Chopin is the MOST even composer in his output, he’s absolutely stunningly consistent.
Alkan at his BEST is monstrously original and cannot be compared to others.
The Concerto for solo piano has a truly unique type of fury. It’s a joyous barrage of insanity, it’s dramatic and powerful but it’s so fucking gleeful and viscerally tied to the physicality of virtuosity that it sounds like a kind of cathartic exorcism of sorts. It doesn’t express torment, apart from maybe the central movement which is truly underrated! The thematic material isn’t as beautiful or ‘refined’ as Chopin’s but the way he builds from his material is stunning and the op39 as a whole in particular stands as a work of absolute inimitable genius.
