Alkan Le Festin d’Ésope

 Day 142

Alkan Le Festin d’Ésope

Jack Gibbons

I’ve heard a few bits and pieces by Alkan over the years but have never really paid any attention to his music. This set of variations - Aesop’s feast - forms the last part of his massive set of 12 etudes in all of the minor keys. In itself it is a substantial piece with 25 variations.

The range of piano techniques is astonishing for a piece written in the 1850s - at time it seems to come close to hitting the piano keys very hard in random chords. To that extent it is a fascinating composition but I have to say that in purely musical terms it doesn’t have much to recommend it. It is one of those piece where there is an insistence on virtuosity for its own sake at the expense of content. Some of its seems very cliched and only occasionally was there something taking the music out of the commonplace. It really did seem as if the composer was sitting down at the piano and showing off. 

Alkan has his admirers (enthusiasts is perhaps a better word) and some very distinguished pianists have recorded his music so there must be more to his music that I found here. But I can’t see me returning anytime soon to sample another piece where the pianist seems intent on bashing the living daylights out of the piano.