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Charles-Valentin Alkan
November 30, 1813 - March 29, 1888
born in Paris, France, composed during the Romantic period
Biography
Charles-Valentin Alkan was one of the great composer/pianists of the nineteenth century and a major influence on many subsequent musicians. He wrote some of the most unusual and technically difficult music of his time, an output that no less an authority than Ferruccio Busoni called "the greatest achievement in piano music after Liszt."

Alkan was an extraordinary prodigy: he entered the Paris Conservatoire when he was 6 years old and won first prizes for solfège at age 7, for piano at 11, for harmony at 14, and for organ at 21. He quickly made a name for himself in the Paris salons as a gifted young pianist and played some London concerts in 1833 to great acclaim. From 1829 to 1836, he was a part-time teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, but he never joined the regular staff.

Alkan was well known in intellectual circles -- he counted among his friends Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Frédéric Chopin -- but he was always something of an introvert and misanthrope; at age 25 he dropped out of society, the first of his frequent and sometimes lengthy withdrawals. Over the next 35 years he appeared in public only rarely; not very much is known about his life in those years. Only in 1873 did he make a return to the concert stage, playing a series of Petits concerts at the Salle Erard (where he also taught classes in the afternoons).