Vincenzo Maltempo’s previous three discs of Alkan for Piano Classics, all of them outstanding, were recorded on a modern Steinway. For this latest selection, he has opted to play a 19th-century instrument, an 1899 Erard which was, apparently, Alkan’s favourite make of instrument. “I’m convinced,” Maltempo writes, “That music like that of Alkan rings with an unexpected power and is indeed much more effective on an instrument such as an Erard rather than on a modern one.” It’s the lack of homogeneity on such a piano, the distinctive character of each register, that Alkan’s keyboard writing exploits so vividly, and the choice of pieces here was designed to demonstrate those qualities. They include some of his most eccentric, even grotesque music: fantasies that obsessively worry away at an idea until they become menacing; a funeral march in which the left hand creates an fearsome, drum-like effect; and the piece that gives the disc its title, Le Chanson de la Folle au Bord de la Mer (The Song of the Madwoman by the Sea), one of the Op 31 Preludes, in which the piano writing creates a whole seascape, over which the disembodied song is heard.
