Alkan - Bombardo-Carillon

"The 'Toccatina' in C minor Op. 75, together with 'Bombardo-Carillon' for four feet (sic) was probably the last of Alkan's compositions to be published in the 1870's. Like so many of his greatest miniatures it all looks too simple on paper, yet the effect in performance is unique and will startle even the most sophisticated twentieth-century ears inured though they are to every latest freak of compositional absurdity. From his earliest creative period an obsessional streak in Alkan seemed to drive him into writing toccatas, or pieces in toccata style; the third study from Op. 76 and 'Le Chemin de Fer' are toccatas in all but name. Now for the last time he spins his relentless semiquavers, but with a difference. Held in sinister, expressionless pianissimo for over a hundred bars they flicker with the eerie potential of a time-bomb ticking over. Astringent dissonances tease the spare two-part writing as the mercurial figuration collides with biting, staccato counterpoints. An abrupt modulation to A flat major has the right hand weaving more open textures above a timp-like ostinato, in the masterly disregard of harmonic alignment. For twenty-seven bars the tonality remains uneasily poised on the tonic and dominant of A flat until, with the first hint of a foreign note (G flat), stability founders. The ostinato is wrenched out of phase. The souffle-like textures contract. As the pull of C minor, through its augmented sixth, becomes even more critical, the rhythm tightens and, with matchless timing, the right-hand intervals continue to narrow until they converge into the contours of the reprise. Here, their outline still afflicted by the abrasive G flat (F sharp), the harmony is made explicit by the modest incursion of a third voice. The piece has by now run three-quarters of its course held in a breathtaking pianissimo. Without warning it lashes out as twenty withering bars in contrary motion followed by two slashed chords propel the listener into silence. For seven anxious bars the semiquavers flutter, tentatively, before being finally dismissed by an angry flurry as it devolves with the explosive force of both hands on to the blinding light of middle C. If this 'Toccatina' were Alkan's last completed composition he could scarcely have devised a more appropriate or grotesque way of signing off than by this self-mocking reversal of his all too familiar slap on the outer extremities of the keyboard."

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01:55

Charles-Valentin Alkan - Toccatina Op. 75 - Ronald Smith

02:52

Charles-Valentin Alkan - Finale

03:44

Charles Valentin Alkan - Allegretto

03:36

Charles-Valentin Alkan - Laus Deo