At the start of the
chapter entitled ‘Organ or Pedal Piano?’
in his indispensable book on the music
of Alkan first published in 1987, Ronald
Smith declared that until Alkan’s organ
music ‘receives a full and independent
study, preferably by an organist who
is also a concert-pianist, its significance
can hardly be realised’. He also made
the ambitious claim that ‘it contains
some of the profoundest and most varied
works for its medium since Bach’, a
statement which tantalised me when I
first read it.
Although it is true
that the discography of Alkan’s organ
music has not kept pace with the growing
number of piano CDs, there have been
some invaluable recordings in the past
few decades. John Wells’s notable recording
made in 1988, the first New Zealand
organ CD, has given me great pleasure
over the years.
With his new series
of recordings Kevin Bowyer and Toccata
Classics have done Alkan a huge service.
Bowyer is the ideal advocate for this
music: not only is he a consummate and
highly intelligent musician, but his
technique seems to know no bounds. The
12 Études pour les pieds seulement
represent some of the most forbidding
technical challenges in the organ repertoire.
A performer who has not only mastered
the spine-chilling and diabolical difficulties
of these works but is also able to unlock
their musical qualities from the page
is a rare artist indeed.
Volume 2 starts with
the short Pro Organo dating from
1850, so one of Alkan’s earliest organ
compositions. Its tantalisingly brief
journey from the minor opening to the
final abrupt C major cadence immediately
draws the listener into this composer’s
unique musical universe. It also serves
to introduce another star of this project,
the Blackburn Cathedral organ. Since
its renovation in 2001/02 it sounds
even more impressive than I remember,
helped by the excellent cathedral acoustic.
Included on this disc
are the final six of the 12 Études
pour les pieds seulement, the first
six appearing on the first volume. Like
much of Alkan’s oeuvre, which to uninitiated
can sound severe and slightly forbidding,
this is music which yields its secrets
on repeated hearings. As Malcolm MacDonald
tells us in his perceptive notes, ‘though
they can be regarded as technical studies…they
are in their own way as serious and
epoch-making music as his two sets of
12 Études for piano.’
Characteristically, Alkan demands from
the feet the same amount of dexterity
as the ten fingers.
Each study has a strongly
defined character and as a set projects
a vast range of emotion, from extreme
delicacy to violent turbulence. As MacDonald
states, some of these fascinating works
are really miniature tone-poems. The
ninth Étude was considered by
Ronald Smith as the ne plus ultra
of Alkan’s fiendish demands upon
the organist’s feet, and Bowyer clearly
relishes it challenges. It further highlights
the almost superhuman technical qualities
needed by the performer, similar to
those presented by his piano Trois
Grandes Études Op 76 for
the hands separately and reunited. I
found the twelfth and final Étude,
a chaconne with 40 variations,
particularly arresting and a fitting
climax to whole set.
The rest of the CD
is devoted to the 11 pieces dans
le Style Religieux et 1 Transcription,
du Messie de Handel, Op. 72, which
Smith believed contains some of Alkan’s
most impressive music. Composed
in the 1860s and designated for ‘piano
ou harmonium’, the set works effectively
on the organ, particularly when performed
with such conviction as it is here.
Again, Alkan’s stylistic fingerprints
are found all over these medium-sized
pieces. It seems invidious to single
out individual highlights. The contrast
between the almost child-like innocence
at the start of the fourth piece and
the mock-sinister tune in the bass is
delightfully captured, and the eleventh
and longest of the pieces, which Smith
described as ‘an absolute oddity’, is
typically bizarre and compelling as
only Alkan can be.
This CD demands to
be heard by a wide musical audience
and not only by Alkan and organ aficionados.
High accolades should also be awarded
to Toccata Classics for such an enterprising
release, the excellent recording quality
achieved by Lance Andrews of Lammas
Records and by the producer Richard
Tanner.
Robert Costin
for details
Kevin Bowyer (organ) 
