[쇼팽, 리스트와 친구였던 프랑스 음악가]Charles-Valentin Alkan

Charles-Valentin Alkan

Charles-Valentin Alkan, c. 1835. Portrait by Édouard Dubufe

(30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888)

 was a French-Jewish composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s

and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt,

among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life.

[알캉 ((Charles-Henri-)Valentin Alkan)

19세기 피아노의 거장 가운데 한 사람이었으며, 19세기 음악에 있어 가장 불가사의한 인물 가운데 한 사람이다. 유대인 부모에게서 태어났으며, 그의 형제자매들(5명의 형제와 1명의 자매)도 '알캉'을 성으로 사용했고 그들 역시 음악가였다. 발랑탱 알캉은 7세의 나이로 파리 음악원에서 최고상을 받아 처음 주목을 받았으며, 17세경에 피아노의 거장으로서의 명성을 얻었다. 젊은시절 조르주 상드, 빅토르 위고, 프레데리크 쇼팽, 프란츠 리스트가 속해 있던 모임에 참여했지만, 20대 초반에 오랫동안 사교계와 연주회를 떠나 작곡에 몰두했다. 난해하면서 때로 이단적인 그의 음악은 건반악기 연주 기교를 초월한 재능과 상상력을 보여주었다. 대부분 피아노와 페달 피아노를 위해 작곡된 수많은 그의 작품들 가운데는 모든 장조와 단조를 사용하고 있는 전주곡과 연습곡, 12곡의 소품을 엮은 <달>, 소나타, 피아노 협주곡 C 이미지단조가 포함되어 있다. 세자르 프랑크는 그의 여러 소품들을 오르간 곡으로 편곡했다. [다음백과]

[작품 모음]

Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six. His career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. Although he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Parisian artistic world, including Eugène Delacroix and George Sand, from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions – virtually all of which are for the keyboard. During this period he published, among other works, his collections of large-scale studies in all the major keys (Op. 35) and all the minor keys (Op. 39).

The latter includes his Symphony for Solo Piano (Op. 39, nos. 4–7) and

Concerto for Solo Piano (Op. 39, nos. 8–10), which are often considered among his masterpieces and are of great musical and technical complexity. Alkan emerged from self-imposed retirement in the 1870s to give a series of recitals that were attended by a new generation of French musicians.

Alkan's attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work. He was the first composer to incorporate Jewish melodies in art music. Fluent in Hebrew and Greek, he devoted much time to a complete new translation of the Bible into French. This work, like many of his musical compositions, is now lost. Alkan never married, but his presumed son Élie-Miriam Delaborde was,

like Alkan, a virtuoso performer on both the piano and the pedal piano, and edited a number of the elder composer's works.[영문자료 더보기:Charles-Valentin Alkan]

Following his death (which according to persistent but unfounded legend was caused by a falling bookcase) Alkan's music became neglected, supported by only a few musicians including Ferruccio Busoni, Egon Petri and Kaikhosru Sorabji. From the late 1960s onwards, led by Raymond Lewenthal

and Ronald Smith, many pianists have recorded his music and brought it back into the repertoire.