ABSTRACT
The reception area will be mainly centred around the nineteenth century although the case study of the Concerto op 39 will serve to survey the reception shift during the twentieth century of a representative Alkanian work. Charles Valentin Alkan's compositions and performances of other composers and his own music have evoked the widest range of reception from the highly negative to the enthusiastic in France and elsewhere. Moreover Alkan's miniature forms irritate Francois-Joseph Fetis despite the composer's ingenuity and originality. Alkan's op 15 are technically skilled too: 'taken singly, each one of them forms a complete whole in which the principal motive skilfully managed developed with wisdom always dominates the abundant subsidiary melodies'. The enthusiastic reception of alkan's own music and his pianistic insights increased over the series of Petits Concerts and from the reviews from 1873 to 1880 there is a marked trend for ever-growing respect for this most aristocratic of French composers and pianists.
