A Sonata For The Ages

In all the broad range of the piano repertoire, there are few compositions more fiendish and technically daunting than the works of Charles-Valentin Alkan -- unless they are other works by Alkan.  Really, it's unnecessary to look any further than the technical demands of his work to realize why Alkan's music has been studiously avoided by almost all pianists.

Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) moved in the same circles as his close personal friend, Chopin, and Liszt -- among others -- and their respect and admiration for him as a composer and as a pianist is well documented.  The friendship with Chopin is easy to understand.  Despite their totally different approaches to composition, both men were pianists exclusively and composers for the piano almost exclusively.

In recent years, it has become possible to appreciate the scope of Alkan's art through the efforts of such artists as Ronald Smith, Raymond Lewenthal, and Marc-Andre Hamelin.

One of the first great works of Alkan's maturity was his Grande Sonate for the piano, subtitled Les Quatres Ages, Op. 33, which he completed in the 1840s.

I first made the acquaintance of this remarkable piece in Ronald Smith's pioneering EMI recording, now about half a century old.  The recording I pulled out the other day, which triggered this post, was Hamelin's 1994 Hyperion recording.

Although I have listened to some of Alkan's other music, it often strikes me as being virtuosity devoid of purpose.  But that is not true of this sonata.  Indeed, I think Alkan here succeeded even more triumphantly than either Chopin or Liszt in reorganizing the piano sonata along lines that were entirely unique and entirely his own.

The key word is "reorganizing".  Liszt's B minor sonata, admirable as it is, doesn't entirely succeed in convincing me that there is a structure under all the thematic transformations.  No such charge can be levelled at this extraordinary piece.  Its unique character begins with its unusual key relationships and by no means stops at the fact that the four movements are arranged in an order such that each one is slower than its predecessor, a process which I can't recall ever encountering in any other work.

The title gives the clue to the composer's intentions.  This sonata is a succession of musical impressions, firmly controlled by a classical sense of structure, of a man's life in four decades: his twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

The first movement, the young man in his twenties, was aptly described by Smith as "a whirlwind of a scherzo".  The high-energy first theme is beset by numerous silent beats and cross-rhythms.  It goes swiftly through a main melody and a succeeding counter-melody.  There then follows a trio section of a completely contrasting, march-like tone, before the two main themes of the scherzo return in a free recapitulation.  Although the movement begins in D major it ends in B major.

The second movement, the thirties, is the longest and also the most technically challenging.  It begins in the unusual and disturbing key of D sharp minor.   Subtitled "Quasi-Faust", it portrays the hero in a series of themes which -- like those in the first movement of Liszt's Faust-Symphonie, depict the searching, inquisitive, intellectual aspects of the character.  The first theme up is again of a march-like cut, and launches a lengthy work in classical sonata form.  This ferocious movement eventually arises to a cadence which might be expected to launch a free cadenza in the manner of a concerto.  Instead, after a silent pause, we hear the quiet beginnings of a fugue which soon grows and grows to dominate the entire keyboard -- expanding as it goes until there are no less than eleven separate lines or "voices" all sounding together.  The movement ends in F sharp major.

The third movement, the forties, is an idyll of happy home life in G major.  Here Alkan foreshadows the later depictions of Richard Strauss in his Ein Heldenleben and Symphonia domestica.  The music opens with a long singing melody, and later we hear a swifter lyrical idea representing the children which sounds positively Chopinesque.  Near the end, there is a moment of prayer illustrated by a hymn-like chordal theme which then proceeds in beautiful counterpoint with the "Chopin" melody.

The final movement in G sharp major is slow, dark, and full of despair.  Entitled "Prometheus enchained", it represents the fear of aging and death with long, slow dragging bass scales and emphatic chords which as quickly lose steam and fade away again.  The end is the longest scale of all, rising with slow but dogged determination to a concluding cadence of staccato chords with pauses between them, then a final sustained chord, quiet and low down on the keyboard.  Here, it is the finale of Tchaikovsky's last symphony which is definitely foreshadowed.

Right from the first time I heard this piece, I was captivated by the energy and sense of forward motion that infuses all the music.  The speeds may get slower and slower as the sonata progresses, yet there is never a feeling that the composer has run out of ideas, or is just doodling along to the next spectacular effect.  Although the ordering of the movements, and the key sequence, are wildly unconventional, the structural backbone underlying the work keeps both pianist and listener firmly on course right from first to last.  And, again in contrast to Liszt's sonata, it's unnecessary to listen to Les quatres ages more than once or twice before its structure becomes readily apparent.

Although there are now several recordings of Alkan's sonata available (and quite a few recordings of his other works), I would definitely recommend Hamelin's magisterial account, still available as a download from the Hyperion records website.