KENNETH HAMILTON ON THE CULT OF ALKAN (Part 1)

Come this Sunday evening, Singapore will bear witness to the first ever performance here of Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano, long regarded as one of piano literature's most fiendish works. The performer will be the indefatigable champion of pianistic lost causes KENNETH HAMILTON, who will also perform Chopin's Funeral March Sonata and the Wagner-Liszt Tannhäuser Overture for some balance and semblance of sanity. The concert takes place at Esplanade Recital Studio at 7.30 pm.

Below is my introduction to Hamilton's programme, as printed in the programme booklet, and following that is the short interview I conducted with Hamilton on The Cult of Alkan.

The original LP of
John Ogdon playing Alkan.
This music on CD may only be found
in the Great Pianists of the 20th Century
series issued by Philips.
Good luck trying to hunt it down.  

ALKAN and THE ART OF PIANO ALCHEMY

The inveterate pianophile’s first exposure to Alkan is akin to a JFK moment; you remember exactly the day it took place. For me, it was an afternoon after school in 1983, having made the short distance from Raffles Junior College’s Paterson Road campus to the record department of Tangs Superstore on Orchard Road. Those were the days when a department store actually had a music section that stocked classical records. Rummaging through the cut-out bin, I chanced upon an LP on the RCA label entitled John Ogdon plays Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano. On the black cover was a side-profile of a bearded man with erupting keyboards, spouting flames and sulphurous fumes. It looked more like a rock album, and at $8 just too good to pass up.

Once the stylus hit the first track, the sound of loud chords (in the exotic key of G sharp minor) struck at an alarming pace and volume assailed the ears. Not since the opening chords of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier or Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy has any piano music begun with such outright fury and vehemence. Here the piano takes on dual roles of soloist and orchestra, and with no respite to the pianist whatsoever. 

And this was just its first movement, humbly titled Étude No.8 from Alkan’s 12 Études in the minor keys Op.39, which lasts a good half-hour. The entire concerto would clock in at a staggering 50 minutes. This was supposed to be the Romantic era equivalent of Bach’s Italian Concerto, but old Johann Sebastian had nothing on Alkan in terms of scope and scale. Neither does Schumann’s Concerto sans orchestre Op.14, which seems like a pygmy by comparison.

So who was this Alkan? Charles-Valentin Morhange (1813-1888), a French composer of Jewish ancestry, who had taken his father’s name as his own. Alkan was a contemporary of Chopin, Schumann and Liszt, and a piano virtuoso second to none, except to the great Liszt himself. He was also an utter eccentric and recluse, one who found great difficulty assimilating into polite society and the Establishment of musical academics and intellectuals. 

His fiendishly difficult scores were often regarded as too long and complex, too much effort for too little gain, and just too weird. Little wonder his music was little known until the second half of the 20^th century, championed by the likes of Ogdon, Raymond Lewenthal, Ronald Smith, and later by Marc-André Hamelin, Alan Weiss, Bernard Ringeissen, Laurent Martin and this evening’s pianist Kenneth Hamilton.

The tradition of performing Alkan in Singapore has been limited to just three events. In 2004, Leslie Howard replaced the late Ronald Smith at the Singapore International Piano Festival and performed Alkan’s Symphony for Solo Piano (Op.39 Nos.4-7, a Singapore premiere) in a concert dedicated to the memory of Smith. In 2007, Kenneth Hamilton gave the long-awaited premiere of Le festin d’Esope (Aesop’s Feast, Op.39 No.12), the fantastical set of variations that closes the Op.39 Études. 

In 2012, Alkan’s transcription of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 was the highlight of Hamilton’s 2-part recital 200 Years of the Piano. In each of these unforgettable performances, the pianists transformed the multitudes of notes on the page into something special, the pianistic equivalent of alchemy, turning the base metals of early Romantic excesses into aural gold. 

In the pages that follow, you will find an interview with Hamilton on The Cult of Alkan, which I hope will whet your interest on this curious and totally original pianist-composer. More importantly, hold on to the edge of your seat for Hamilton’s Singapore premiere of Alkan’s Concerto for Solo Piano. Don’t say you weren’t warned.       

     

Chang Tou Liang

KENNETH HAMILTON talks about his fascination about Alkan, one of classical music’s most eccentric and most misunderstood composers, and his extraordinary piano music.

This year, the world commemorates the bicentenaries of the birth of three great Romantic composers, Richard Wagner (1813-1883), Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and Charles-Valentin Morhange, aka Alkan (1813-1888). Somehow I have little doubt which of these three you feel closest to.

Well, as it happens, it’s Wagner! If I could sing, then I would certainly try to make a career with Wagner’s operas: phenomenal, astonishingly powerful music. Verdi, apart from La Traviata, has never really done much for me, although I can see why I ought to admire his music.  But if you ever heard me sing, you will realise why I have to play the piano — and when it comes to the piano, Alkan’s music fascinates me. He was an artistic extremist, and there is no doubt about that, and an uneven genius (the same is also true of every great 19^th century keyboard composer apart from Chopin), but at his best, Alkan could match Chopin and Liszt note for note. The Concerto and Symphony for piano, for example, are utterly overwhelming conceptions.  

How did you first come to discover the music of Alkan?

With initial resistance! One of my former university professors, Hugh Macdonald, a great admirer of Alkan, introduced his music to me. He wrote the entry on the composer for the New Grove Dictionary of Music. When I was a student, he suggested I take a look at Alkan’s works, because I seemed to have the technique to tackle them. I did read through a few Alkan scores at that time, but did not really “get” the style. It all seemed to be sound and fury signifying nothing, or at least very little.

But a few years later, I tried again, and took up the Aesop’s Feast variations (Le Festin d’Esope). Alkan’s quirkiness now began to make more sense to me. I started to see the meaning behind the thickets of notes, and began to explore more of his music. I subsequently learned the ludicrously named Sonatina (actually about as far from a sonatina as you can get — like calling Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony a divertimento.) and gingerly made my way to the Concerto for solo piano — that marathon of 19^th century piano music.

Interestingly, he was one composer (just like Chopin and Medtner) for whom the piano was sine qua non. There was no piece he wrote which did not include the piano. 

That is more or less true. There is, however, the Monty Pythonesque Funeral March for a Dead Parrot, and a lost orchestral symphony, among one or two other “non keyboard” pieces. But basically you are right — Alkan’s imagination was almost always wedded to the piano, as was Chopin’s. This was typical of the “Parisian” pianist-composers of the era. Liszt, of course, attempted to break out of the strait jacket with his symphonic poems in the 1850s, but even he was accused of simply producing orchestrated “fantasias for piano”. That’s why he refused to publish solo piano arrangements of the symphonic poems under his own name, although he was perfectly happy to lend a helping hand to others who wished to do so.      

Continued in Part II:

pianomania: KENNETH HAMILTON ON THE CULT OF ALKAN (Part II)

KENNETH HAMILTON ON THE CULT OF ALKAN (Part II)

The opening bars of
Alkan's Concerto for solo piano.
Looks easy enough, but
wait till you see the rest!

Continued from Part I:

pianomania: KENNETH HAMILTON ON THE CULT OF ALKAN (Part 1)

Let’s now talk a little about Alkan’s Concerto for Solo Piano, which you will be premiering in Singapore. Its three parts are Études No.8, 9 and 10 of Alkan’s 12 Études in the minor keys Op.39, a set which the late Alkan-specialist Ronald Smith endearingly referred to as “Frankenstein’s monster”. The work lasts close to 50 minutes, while its first movement is a good half-hour long. How does a pianist begin to approach a work like this?

With trepidation! It is actually the first movement that is the problem — the other two movements, whatever their difficulties, are of more or less normal length, clocking in at around 10 minutes each.

Despite his much-vaunted “eccentricity” Alkan knew very well that the first movement, at nearly half an hour’s playing time, vastly exceeded normal expectations. He indicated a possible cut in the score, which does tear the heart out of the movement (only a bit of the exposition, the cadenza and coda survive) but at least reduces it to roughly the same length as its two companions.

I’m not particularly appalled by this cut. In fact, I have occasionally played the shorter version of the piece when the overall length of the concert programme seemed to demand it, but you do lose a lot of wonderful music. And of course, you also lose the opportunity to admire the way Alkan expertly sustains his inspiration throughout the entire half hour. His imagination was really burning at white heat here. The pianist’s stamina has to be too —  and that is the challenge!    

Hans von Bulöw referred to Alkan as the “Berlioz of the piano”. Surely he was referring to this Concerto, which comes very close to the length of Symphonie Fantastique.

It certainly fits the concerto very well, although at the time he was thinking of the set of Studies in all the Major Keys (Op.35), which includes such programmatic novelties as a piece called Fire in the Neighbouring Village! Von Bülow, like most good Germans of his day, tended to associate “programme music” with the French, and especially Berlioz — hence Alkan almost automatically became “the Berlioz of the Piano”. 

I am not sure whether Alkan had students or disciples like Liszt did, but his pianistic legacy has had some influence on the likes of Busoni, Sorabji and Ronald Stevenson. Surely the finale of the Concerto, marked Allegretto alla barbaresca, and his Allegro barbaro (one of the Op.35 Études) had something to do with Bartok’s little piece of barbarism.

Yes indeed — I am sure Bartok knew that piece. Even more surprisingly, Brahms was well acquainted with some of Alkan’s music—at one time he even practised the Study for Two Hands Together — and Mendelssohn too. When Liszt discovered that one of his students had brought Le Festin d’Esope to a masterclass, he commented that Alkan “had written many fine things, which ought to be better known”. Busoni, as you say, was a great admirer, and even played (to vociferous complaints from the critics) Alkan’s gargantuan cadenza for Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. And of course, Ronald Stevenson has created his own ambitious tribute to Alkan in the wittily-titled Festin d’Alkan — an acerbic counterpart to his intensely nostalgic Symphonic Elegy for Liszt, which I had the pleasure of premiering in Singapore a couple of years ago.   

Elie-Miriam Delaborde,
Alkan's illegitimate son.
Notice the
familial resemblance?

As for Alkan’s students—he had many of them, but most of them were aristocratic ladies who had no ambitions at all for a professional career. On the other hand, Alkan’s own illegitimate son, Elie-Miriam Delaborde, did study piano with his father, and himself became a composer, and a long-standing piano teacher at the Paris Conservatoire. Olga Samaroff was one of his pupils, so the “line”, as it were, carried on from there.    

What is it that grabs you most about Alkan? Is it the transcendental technique required for his music, his Gothic proclivities, his outrageous eccentricities, or his all round weirdness, wackiness and zaniness?

I’d say all of the above! You don’t quite get that combination anywhere else. But ultimately, none of his grotesqueries, nor his pianistic challenges, nor his obsessive inflexibilities would amount to much if the musical inspiration was not there. Alkan’s best music is worth listening to because it is good—not because it is grotesque!  

Which version of Alkan’s demise do you subscribe to? Death by falling bookcase, death in the kitchen, or death by depression and neglect?

To go back to Hugh Macdonald, his researches on that issue are definitive, or at least as definitive as we are likely to get, given the paucity of sources. It was not a falling bookcase that did for Alkan, but a combination of a seizure and a falling coat-stand (which he may have grabbed onto to steady himself, then toppled over in the process). The “bookcase” bit seems to have been a later piece of gossip. Alkan was well-known to have had academic interests, and “death by excessive scholarship” made a good story. A warning to us all!   

This question is aimed for the general listener. What else by Alkan should one listen to? What should be in the Alkan’s Greatest Hits album?

Unfortunately for the amateur pianist, Alkan’s best music is often his most difficult —and that includes Aesop’s Feast, the Symphony, Concerto and Sonatina. The Concerto is, in my view, his finest work, but there are many other splendid pieces, including the tremendously powerful psalm paraphrase By the Waters of Babylon, and the wittily varied Esquisses (Sketches). Anyone wanting to start exporing Alkan should investigate the exquisite Esquisses, and perhaps take a trip along the waters of Babylon…

Don't miss this historic concert!

200 YEARS OF THE PIANO / Kenneth Hamilton Piano Recitals / Review

200 YEARS OF THE PIANO
KENNETH HAMILTON, Piano
Esplanade Recital Studio
Saturday & Monday (31 March & 2 April 2012)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 4 April 2012 with the title "Piano adventures".

The annual piano recitals in Singapore by Scottish virtuoso Kenneth Hamilton, professor at the University of Birmingham, have taken on an epic quality of late. This year’s offering, spanning over two centuries of piano literature, was shoe-horned into two evenings with a day of rest in between.

Other than a popular Chopin Ballade, there was little concession for familiar music by the “usual suspects”. His overview of this endlessly fascinating subject was instead a survey of evolving piano styles over the epochs. Even the Mozart presented were rarities, beginning with Suite in the Style of Handel, published posthumously with a French overture, fugue and Allemande which acknowledged the past, and a tagged-on Gigue whose unlikely dissonances looked toward the future.

Beethoven’s late A Major Sonata (Op.101) was also atypical in that it seemed to predict the lyricism of Mendelssohn and passion of Schumann. To this rollicking score, Hamilton wrought fistfuls of colours and an over-arching sense of cohesion. The highlight of the first evening was Charles-Valentin Alkan’s transcription of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 (left), where both piano and orchestra were fused into an outsized conflation.

This was no longer good old Amadeus but some gothic Frankenstein’s monster with gargantuan cadenzas (the first movement uproariously incorporated Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony) that best exemplified the excesses of the Romantic age. Hamilton’s heroic, no-holds barred account was not one for purists or faint-hearted but manna for the adventurous. One is unlikely to encounter it again for a long time.

The second evening showcased the art of variations and more transcriptions. Brahms used a simple air by the composer of Messiah as the subject for his Handel Variations (Op.24), a lengthy discourse which Hamilton handled with almost disarming facility. Its massive concluding fugue began alarmingly on a furious pace, which he built on with fearless panache and implausible reserves of adrenaline.

In between big works in both recitals were a series of well-chosen transcriptions, familiar and obscure. Brahms and Liszt, Busoni and Rachmaninov, all appeared but it was two gems by the Scotsman Ronald Stevenson, of songs by Ivor Novello and Richard Tauber, which caught the ear. The most modern work was Stevenson’s Heroic Song for Hugh MacDiarmid (1967, left), with its evocation of highland sagas, chants and bagpipes effects.

The final tour de force came in Liszt’s solo version of Totentanz (Dance of Death), essentially variations on the medieval chant Dies Irae. How Hamilton mustered its multitudes of flying notes, crunching chords, stampeding octaves and sweeping glissandi remains in the realm of physicists. The two encores, by Liszt and his son-in-law Hans von Bülow, brought the audience from Hades back to solid earth. From the diabolical to the divine, Hamilton’s piano history lesson and “one man band” has to be experienced to be believed.

What do you call a collection of piano virtuosos? Three of four pianists responsible for the most Singapore premieres of piano works. Kenneth Hamilton (Liszt, Alkan, Ireland, Stevenson) with Albert Tiu (Rachmaninov, Chopin-Godowsky, Barber) and Nicholas Loh (Kapustin, Rzewski). The 4th pianist is Shane Thio (Messiaen, Takemitsu, Ligeti, Schulhoff), who was not at the recital. (Photo courtesy of Prof Lim Mong King)

Note: Kenneth Hamilton's encores were Brahms Intermezzo in A major (Op.118 No.2) on Saturday evening, and Liszt Legend No.2: St Francis de Paul Walking on the Waves and Bülow-Liszt Dante Sonnet on Monday evening.