LXIX. ALKAN, Charles-Valentin (1813-1888)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was an old man when Felix Mendelssohn, age 12, paid him a visit and played the piano for him.
One of the things the child prodigy played for him was a piano reduction of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
"What a noise!" Goethe declared. "I can only imagine it with a loud orchestra!"
Goethe never met Alkan. He would have had to cover his ears.
Alkan, a French Jew, was widely hailed as a great pianist, along with Chopin and Liszt. But he preferred a reclusive lifestyle, and spent his time writing piano music and translating the Hebrew bible into French.
To play Alkan's music requires the abilities of a super-human pianist -- the writing is thorny and complex.
OTOH, he was capable of great delicacy -- as heard in the middle two movements here.
The legend that he died after reaching for a volume of the Talmud off a tumbling bookshelf seems to have been debunked.
Still -- not a bad way to go.
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