Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 20 (Arr. Charles-Valentin Alkan)

Alkan’s fascination with the technical aspects of the art of transcription shines through this element of his output, perhaps never more brightly than in his transcription for solo piano of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756-91) D minor Piano Concerto. This brims from start to finish with piano writing of startling inventiveness and originality, which is only heightened through familiarity with the work in its original guise for piano and orchestra (or indeed with the comparatively lacklustre transcription of the same work by Hummel, who was not himself an uninventive pianist). To some degree, the ingenuity of Alkan’s craftsmanship arises from the need to weave both the orchestral and solo piano elements of Mozart’s masterwork into a single pianistic tapestry, still communicating what Charles Rosen memorably described as ‘the contrast and struggle of one individual voice against many’. But some of the most strikingly novel writing is to be found in Alkan’s realisation of Mozart’s orchestral tuttis, where there is no solo piano part requiring incorporation. At a deeper level, this pianistic inventiveness is driven by Alkan’s almost obsessive determination to preserve as many features of an original orchestral score as possible (in contrast to the more pragmatic approach adopted by Liszt). The level of detail Alkan retains here is on par with that preserved by, for example, Sigismond Thalberg in his denser transcriptions from ’L’art du chant appliqué au piano, Op. 70’, such as ‘Il mio tesoro’ from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Alkan’s reluctance to sacrifice detail explains why he regarded the number of operatic or orchestral works that were amenable to piano transcription as being ‘quite small’. The resourcefulness of the resulting craftsmanship is perhaps matched only by Alkan’s similar efforts in his transcription for solo piano of the first movement of Beethoven’s C minor Piano Concerto, and his own [semi-?]analogous ’Concerto for Solo Piano’ from ’Douze études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op. 39’. In all these works, the full effect of Alkan’s pianism is not self- realising in performance, and it is never enough merely to navigate the notes on the page. Instead, this calls for high-voltage pianism: risks must be taken, and sparks must fly, to bring this music to life. Alkan’s transcription of the opening Allegro opens with Mozart’s foreboding syncopations, and – through the use of ‘various methods of attack, through the intelligent use of certain fingerings, hand-crossing etc’ – manages to convey many of Mozart’s colouristic and rhythmic effects, including (once the piano has entered) the dramatic escalation of tension that Mozart achieves through repeated rhythmic division and subdivision. The movement’s quasi-operatic drama builds through to Alkan’s characteristically acerbic cadenza, which – if not as extreme as that incorporated into his transcription of the first movement of Beethoven’s C minor Piano Concerto – transforms the movement’s ascending triplet motif into the opening of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ symphony. The Romanze showcases Alkan’s con siderable tex- tural ingenuity to distinguish not only between solo and tutti passages, but also between the many different tutti scorings of the main thematic material. The piano soloist’s B flat major ‘aria’ in the first interpolation is a supreme test of a pianist’s ability to make a melody sing over a deceptively busy and multi-layered accompaniment; and the tumultuous G minor storm of the second interpolation sees Alkan pushing at the very limits of what a pianist, with only two hands, can navigate. Finally, the playfulness of the concluding rondo, Allegro assai (marked Prestissimo by Alkan) finds its match in the revelry of Alkan’s joy-filled pianism. Its cadenza, integrating the principal themes from all three movements, leads directly into Mozart’s famously sunlit coda. (Paul Wee) 0:00 - Allegro 14:56 - Romance 23:15 - Rondo. Allegro assai Composed in 1785, transcribed in 1861. pf: Paul Wee original audio: