Charles-Valentin Alkan: Piano Works Yury Favorin

• Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888):
• 1 Super flumina Babylonis "Paraphrase du psaume 137", Op. 52 06:47
• Symphonie pour piano seul No. 4-7, Op. 39:
• 2 I. Allegro 09:38
• 3 II. Marche funèbre 06:02
• 4 III. Menuet 06:04
• 5 IV. Finale 04:23
• Grande Sonate pour piano "Les Quatre Âges de la vie", Op. 33:
• 6 I. 20 ans. Très vite 06:09
• 7 II. 30 ans, Quasi-Faust. Sataniquement 11:23
• 8 III. 40 ans, Un heureux ménage. Lentement 10:24
• 9 IV. 50 ans, Prométhée enchaîné. Extrêmement lent 06:05
• Total Runtime 01:06:55

Info for Charles-Valentin Alkan: Piano Works

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 ». Wit hits 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 first of the twenty-year-old is followed by the dazzline 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.

Yury Favorin, piano

Yury Favorin
Born in 1986, Yury Favorin, who has been described by Journal Zibeline as a “very big musician in the Kingdom of Piano”, a “masters the most difficult: the art of silence” (Performarts France), possessing the “musical intelligence, impeccable technique and artistic sovereignty” (La libre), studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory and received his graduate and postgraduate degrees under professor Mikhail Voskresensky.

Among the pianist’s awards are the Fourth of the Olivier Messiaen Competition in France, the First prize of Gyorgy Cziffra Foundation in Austria and Nikolay Rubinstein Competition for Young Pianists. In 2010 Yury Favorin became a laureate of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Belgium that immediately boosted his international career.

The pianist has appeared with recitals, chamber music programs and as a soloist with orchestra at such famous music festivals as the “La Folle Journée” in Nantes and in Tokyo, Art-November in Moscow, “Musique en Vallée du Tarn” and “L'esprit du piano” in Bordeaux, the International Festival of Saint-Lizier in France, International Festival of Modern Music Moscow Forum: Francophony, International Festival dedicated to the 100th birthday of Olivier Messiaen, the Academy of the Festival Verbier in Switzerland and the International Holland Music Sessions in The Netherlands among others.

Yury Favorin has been welcomed at the great concert halls in Moscow and other Russian cities, as well as in Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Norway, Italy, Japan, and France. His rapidly growing repertoire includes all main classical composers, but the pianist is also widely renowned for his deep interest to contemporary music and its promotion. He has regularly performed pieces by Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti, Georg Friedrich Haas, Peter Ablinger, Philippe Leroux, Richard Barrett, Salvatore Sciarrino, Hugues Dufourt among others and was invited twice as a soloist to perform Messiaen and Béla Bartók works with the Ensemble Intercontemporain with maestro Pierre Boulez as a conductor. Together with a composer Alexey Sysoev (electronics) and Dmitriy Schielkin (percussion) Yury Favorin became a founder of an improvisatory music ensemble “ERROR 404”.

Artist’s list of CDs includes records of works by Franz Lizst, Franz Schubert and Jean Luc Fafchamps released under the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Anthology of the Russian Piano Music (1917–1991), music by Nikolay Myaskovsky and Nikolay Medtner.

Booklet for Charles-Valentin Alkan: Piano Works