Saltarelle Op.23 - Charles-Valentin Alkan | •DevilSynthesia•

"Charles-Valentin Alkan has just died. It was necessary for him to die in order to suspect his existence," one Balthazar Claes noted in Alkan's obituary on April 1, 1888. In the mid-'30s, one of his most perceptive admirers, Dutch composer Bernard van Dieren, observed that "The best one could do to 'make something' of his life would be to suggest that it was wrapped in mystery." Van Dieren was prophetic. So much has been written about Alkan's egregious neglect, his "enigma," since then that it seems incredible he should ever have had, as is said today, "a hit." But on April 29, 1844, he appeared at the Salle Erard after a six-year, self-imposed absence from the concert stage to perform works of Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart (the minuet from the Symphony No. 40 in his own transcription), Beethoven, Weber, and a sheaf of his own compositions -- Nocturne No. 1, Air de ballet, Alleluia, and the Saltarelle -- all published soon afterwards by Richault. And shortly after publication, other pianists were performing them with the Saltarelle eliciting applaudissements frénétiques. Nor was Alkan unknown. Parisians counted him among the brighter stars in a firmament of such notable pianists as Herz, Pixis, Czerny, Kalkbrenner, Thalberg, and Gottschalk (who made his Paris debut in 1844), while connoisseurs recognized him as a performer and creative force on par with his friends Chopin and Liszt and avidly watched him. But public taste is unaccountable and, it must be said, the Saltarelle is not one of Alkan's greater works. With its Prestissimo hijinks, it is cleverly, cracklingly effective rather than grand or substantial. "One of the most brilliant pieces that a virtuoso could include in his repertoire," according to Georges Beck, who included it in his pathbreaking 1969 sheet music anthology of Alkan's works. Curiously, it has hardly been performed or recorded. Alkan's admirers will turn from its spiced exhilaration to the even more piquant Saltarelle concluding his 1856 Sonate de concert for cello and piano.