Alkan - Overture (Part 2/2)

Etude No. 11 "Overture" Op. 39

Quoted from Ronald Smith's Alkan, The Man, The Music:

"Apart from the seventy-two page first movement of the Concerto the penultimate study entitled Ouverture is the longest, taking about fifteen minutes to perform. It is also the most rarely heard. This may be due less to its lack of surface glitter than to the problem of placing it sensibly in a normal concert programme. Although it makes a marvellous opening item it takes courage to meet its challenge 'cold'. On the other hand its massive style, while tending to dwarf succeeding pieces, is not ideally designed to end a recital. This is a pity, for Ouverture is a unique work; stern, sombre and impressive, and despite its cruel technical demands it is intensely rewarding to study."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• alkan
• liszt

[solbap]

EVRY PERSON WHO MIGHT THINK THIS PIECE IS BORING OR BAD,,WELL IM GRATEFUL THAT I HAVE STILL GOOD MUSICAL TASTE, ALL PERSONS GIVING NEGATIVE COMMENTING ABOUT ALKAN'S MASTERPIECES LIKE THIS OVERTOURE, REALLY DONT KNOW WHA THEIR TALKING ABOUT, THEIR JUST PROVOKING. after getting to know about alkan, hamelin and gibbons via utube, im the proud owner of mostly of alkans music, and for christm i hope pianoworks by ronald smith will lay underneath the christmas tree,,

[KeithWhalen11]

The writing strikes me as completely symphonic in nature, what a shame we will probably never hear his lost B minor Symphony. Isn't Jack Gibbons out of this world here?! Woohoo!

[MEpianist]

Alkan is just Mozart with no sense of humor.

[025bb6mm]

Alkan,s oveture is harder I think than Liszt´s Meph. waltz no. 1 but isn´t nicer :) but it is very impressive piece too

[hjiuhfhrehui]

just a little question.. what do you guys think..?? mephisto waltz no 1 by liszt harder?? or alkans ouverture ^^ ??

just wanna know. because im entering a concours and a person next to me plays liszt mephisto waltz :3

[HandyTheXxxX]

@NathanPlano I deleted my last comment because I did make it rather late, and when consulting the score and listening through earlier today I see I misread some of the accidentals. The difference from a circle of fifths is not as dramatic as I made it out to be, but it is interrupted by an augmented fourth, something that is seen in jazz standards such as Autumn Leaves. It appears as: em, A, Dmaj7, Gmaj7, C#halfdim7, F#7, B.

[NathanPlano]

@HandyTheXxxX I appreciate your analysis, and thanks for agreeing. This piece made me explore some more of Alkan's music when I first saw but I still listen to this one frequently :P

[HandyTheXxxX]

@NathanPlano Well, technically it's not quite a circle of fifths as this intellectual farce AndrewFinch seems to discard it as. Simply because it has an augmented fourth in the progression, ie. E, A, D, G, C, F#, B. Pretty close, but he's theoretically wrong. Alkan had a very specific purpose in including this segment you enjoy so much, in creating a really satisfying closure (or beginning of). And I agree with you. It sounds amazing.

[TheWanderingNight]

@thegreatapologist That may be true, but I think the material could be somewhat more condensed in the latter half. In my opinion, it becomes needlessly tiresome in some areas, which is a shame, because the entire Overture is honestly good up until three-quarters of the way through.

[thegreatapologist]

@TheWanderingNight The structure remains perfectly true to a french overture.

[TheWanderingNight]

@nearenough3 I agree that the structure of this Overture is a bit flawed and the music very fireworksy, but it seems a bit pointless comparing Alkan with Chopin. True, Alkan relies on heavier sound, but that's where his subtlety lies. He's equally effective in his more introverted, smaller scale pieces (some Op. 35, Chants, Esquisses etc.). I suppose he is musically less defensible than Chopin, but I prefer to see him as an equal rather than as by any means inferior.