Alkan: Complete Recueils de Chants, Volume One
Stephanie McCallum (piano)
Fitfully imaginative music by Alkan, only now and again worthy of the non-stop excellence of pianist Stephanie McCallum's playing.
Alkan: Complete Recueils de Chants, Volume One
Stephanie McCallum (piano)
Purchase product
Fitfully imaginative music by Alkan, only now and again worthy of the non-stop excellence of pianist Stephanie McCallum's playing.
About
2013 sees the bicentenary of the births not only of Wagner and Verdi but also of the maverick French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan.
Alkan’s music was little appreciated during his lifetime (1813–83), and in the century which followed, when he was largely lost from sight, but now he is increasingly recognised as one of the most individual personalities in all music.
The five albums he called Recueils de chants – miniature tone-poems which marry Classical constraint to virtuoso Romantic excess – provide an attractive gateway to his freewheeling imagination.
This is the first volume of a two-CD series presenting the first recording of the complete Chants in over twenty years and is accompanied by the first-ever recording of the ‘Introduction and Impromptu’ Une fusée.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
May 2013
Fitfully imaginative music by Alkan, only now and again worthy of the non-stop excellence of pianist Stephanie McCallum's playing.
21st June 2013
With Hamelin, Alkan sounds more supercharged and more of a virtuoso vehicle. With McCallum he is more of the poet. And both positions are undoubtedly reflective of the two performers concerned.
