Jack Gibbons plays Alkan Concerto 1st mvt (complete)

Jack Gibbons plays the first movement (complete) of Alkan’s Concerto for solo piano. The monumental Concerto for Solo Piano makes up Etudes 8-10 of Charles-Valentin Alkan’s ’Douze Etudes dans les Tons Mineurs’ (Twelve Studies in the Minor Keys), Alkan’s magnum opus, published in 1857. The Concerto for solo piano has been described as a musical epic and as one of the most original works of its century, and contains some of Alkans finest and most haunting music. As the title of the work suggests, Alkan recreates the massive and contrasting sounds of both piano and orchestra through just one pair of hands. The exuberant finale, with its kaleidoscope of moods, Eastern flavour, and exhilarating peroration, rounds off this massive work to perfection. Jack Gibbons made his London debut in 1979, at the age of 17, performing the Alkan Concerto for solo piano. A year earlier, at the age of 16, he had given only the second ever performance in history of the complete Concerto (Ronald Smi