Charles-Valentin Alkan is one of the most talented French romantic composers and pianists yet his music has rarely been recorded, and too little performed. Fascinated by the piano, Alkan showed great interest in the progress of instrumental manufacture and composed many works for solo piano; the programme chosen by Yury Favorin includes two of his major compositions.

First, the Symphony for solo piano, taken from the Twelves Studies in all the minor keys, described as an “epic for the piano”. With its intense, deep, dense style, exploring and shaping the colourful timbres, it is indeed a symphony that Alkan has written for the piano and not a transcription for piano of an orchestral work.

The Grand Sonata ‘The Four Ages’ is worthy of Beethoven’s sonatas; this is a masterly work, one of the most accomplished sonatas of the romantic piano and herald of the Liszt Sonata. In its four movements Alkan describes the four ages in a man’s life: 20 years old, 30, 40 and 50, explaining that these “correspond to a given moment of existence, to a particular disposition of thought, of the imagination”. Contrary to the typical alternation of slow/fast, the movements are increasingly slow, from Very fast to Extremely slow, matching the inevitable slowing down of life itself. The fire of the twenty-year-old is followed by the dazzling virtuosity of age 30; 40 depicts the tender moment of a couple with its children; then comes the slow, somber and heartrending age 50 that concludes one of the high-points of the whole romantic repertory.

In the mid-nineteenth century, in Paris, Alkan frequented Delacroix and Hugo. This great virtuoso also met the great pianists of his time, including Chopin and Liszt, and the music of this unassuming composer ranks with that of his contemporaries. For tackling this difficult style, with its very large palette of emotions, Yury Favorin, one of the most gifted pianists of the new generation, is the ideal performer.