(Shärl On-re’ Va-lon-tan’ Al-kan’) 1813–88 French pianist and composer One of the only virtuosos before whom Liszt, a contemporary, was believed to be anxious about playing, Alkan extended the technical challenges of piano repertory to astonishing new peaks. A child prodigy and young virtuoso, he performed alongside Frédéric François Chopin (1810–49), but thereafter became an eccentric recluse, ...
imitations of guitar sounds and flamenco or gypsy ornamentation. Recommended Recording: Iberia; Granados: Goyescas, Alicia de Larrocha (Decca) Introduction | Late Romantic | Classical Personalities | Charles Henri Valentin Alkan | Late Romantic | Classical ...
Electro is currently enjoying a huge renaissance, but, despite the current hype and mainstream acceptance of the music, it has always enjoyed a strong cult following. This is due to the music’s many different strands and its constant need for reinvention. At its most basic level, electro differentiates itself from house and techno by the fact that ...
for example, is a rather disparate collection of movements with sudden key changes, thematic transformations and dramatic juxtapositions of contrasting expressions of emotion. Liszt and Charles Henri Valentin Alkan (1813–88) turned to programmes to provide structural unity, as with Liszt’s Après une lecture de Dante (‘After a Reading from Dante’, 1837–49), a ‘fantasia quasi sonata’, and Alkan’s Grand ...
The bagpipe principle is simple: instead of the player blowing directly on a reed pipe, the air is supplied from a reservoir, usually made of animal skin, which is inflated either by mouth or by bellows. The result is the ability to produce a continuous tone, and the possibility of adding extra reed-pipes to enable a single ...
Cut a clean end to a length of bamboo, reed or other tube, place it near the mouth and direct a narrow stream of breath at its edge, and with a little practice, a pitched note can be produced. Blow a little harder and that note will jump to a series of ascending harmonics. It is not ...
String drums are simple string instruments that are struck in a technique similar to playing the violin col legno (literally ‘with the wood’) or battuta (measuring time by beating). They are traditional instruments of Hungary and the Balkans. Ttun ttun The ttun ttun is a Basque instrument constructed from a tapered hollow wooden case that is 11 cm (4 in) wide at ...
Whistles, or duct flutes, have a device to channel the player’s breath, so a narrow air stream hits a sharpened edge, causing the necessary turbulence to vibrate the air column without the player using any special embouchure. Usually this duct is created by inserting a block, known as a fipple, into the end of the ...
(Trumpet, b. 1963) Dave Douglas spans musical abstraction and gutsiness in acclaimed albums and a busy, international touring schedule. After attending Berklee School of Music, New England Conservatory and New York University, he studied with classical trumpeter Carmine Caruso and toured with Horace Silver. He has recorded for a variety of small labels, as well as ...
By 200 BC, the Celts occupied Europe from the Balkans to France, with outposts in Turkey, Spain and the British Isles. However, the rise of Rome, followed by a Germanic drift south, pushed the Celts to the edge of the continent: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany and the Basque country. One theory suggests ...
Following the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe enjoyed a short period of relative stability with Napoleon’s exile, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France and the establishment of the Vienna Peace Settlement in 1815. However, in the early 1820s a number of minor revolts broke out in Naples and ...
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