Jack Gibbons plays Alkan Concerto 2nd movement

Jack Gibbons plays the second movement of Alkan's Concerto for solo piano.

The monumental Concerto for Solo Piano makes up Etudes 8-10 of Charles-Valentin Alkan's 'Douze Etudes dans les Tons Mineurs' (Twelve Studies in the Minor Keys), Alkan's magnum opus, published in 1857. The Concerto for solo piano has been described as a musical epic and as one of the most original works of its century, and contains some of Alkans finest and most haunting music. As the title of the work suggests, Alkan recreates the massive and contrasting sounds of both piano and orchestra through just one pair of hands. The exuberant finale, with its kaleidoscope of moods, Eastern flavour, and exhilarating peroration, rounds off this massive work to perfection.

Jack Gibbons made his London debut in 1979, at the age of 17, performing the Alkan Concerto for solo piano. A year earlier, at the age of 16, he had given only the second ever performance in history of the complete Concerto (Ronald Smith gave the first ever complete performance of the work the previous year, 1977). In 1995 Jack Gibbons became the first pianist to perform the entire three and a half hour 'Douze Etudes dans les Tons Mineurs' of Alkan in a single concert.

For more information on Jack Gibbons visit http://www.jackgibbons.com/

You can also follow Jack Gibbons on Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jack-Gibbons/111942124383

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Charles-Valentin
• Alkan
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• Gibbons
• Concerto
• for
• solo
• piano
• Douze
• Etudes
• dans
• les
• tons
• mineurs
• Opus
• 39
• no.8
• Studies
• classical
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• kempff
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• Rubinstein
• richter
• Chopin
• Gershwin

[xakoviski]

I absolutely love this piece!! Thank you for the upload, never seen it live up untill now.

[AdamKuczynski]

@twooffour Yes, I've certainly come to appreciate that in his music. There are always plenty of surprising or even confusing elements in it. Perhaps that's why I rarely fully appreciate it when I listen to it for the first time (because I'm just wondering what on *earth* I had just heard), but grow to love it dearly after re-playing it a few times. I've gone through this exact process with Festin d'Esope, his entire Concerto, L'incendie au village voisin, and so on.

[L4RSLink]

Amazing piece!

[twooffour]

@Corleone1337

That's what I love about it, though, it's basically like a "big lipped alligator moment", just comes out of nowhere after 6 minutes of the "slow lyrical movement" thing, and then suddenly goes back like nothing happened and you're like "wait, what the hell just happened?" - lol.

It's one of the things I love so much about Alkan, this sort of tongue-in-cheek randomness and over-the-top contrasting.

[Corleone1337]

@twooffour Well, it's not that I find it a bad part, it's just that I think it fits strangely into the whole piece.

[twooffour]

@Corleone1337

Can't believe you said that - the marching section is my absolute favorite part in the movement! :D

[LongDriveChamp03]

That section at 3:20 is such an incredibly emotional passage, I can never listen to it just once. I'm always going back to that one part

[Corleone1337]

3:20 until 3:50 is such a great transition.

Just like the first movement of this concerto, which I consider to be the greatest piano piece, this gets better every time I listen to it. And, again just like the first movement, Jack plays it so amazingly that I'm even beginning to like listening to my least favourite part of this movement ( 6:40 until 7:40 ).

Heh, I should be writing a paper at the moment, but I just can't stop listening to Alkan!

Thank you for uploading this, Mr Gibbons!

[OrangeSodaKing]

My favorite movement of the piece, and my favorite slow movement ever composed (along with Ravel's Concerto in G)!