I remember first reading about this piece in Ronald Smith's book on Alkan - it was one of the pieces that he implied was "more difficult than it's worth". Even the greatest Alkan biographer and champion underestimated Alkan! I think that in the hands of Yui Morishita - we see this is not a mere stunt showpiece but a REALLY exciting musical composition with a wealthy of unique character and genius.
To me this Smith's description is very strange. He himself played some Alkan pieces that were as hard as this one and much less interesting... For example March Triomphale. I was shocked to realize he quit this piece by choice. Maybe he was just tired of playing and recording too much Alkan. He could have quit the Concerto too, but he didn't.
The first recording of this piece was done by a synthesizer. It had long been waited, I was quite excited and enjoyed very much. But MIDI don't always deal correctly with strong beats. Them afterwards there were human performances of this piece imitating that first MIDI. We can hear a wrong place of strong beats and accents the whole piece here. FIRST note is strong, not THIRD one. To me, it was the original famous MIDI fault (and, of course, those who play in imitation mode instead of solving the aesthetical problems of the piece) Also one would need to choose a more intelligent tempo in order to keep all the details organized.
Thank God almighty I can finally listen to this masterpiece for free! Do I still have to worry about potential threatt of this video being gone or is this gonna be safe? Regaardless of that, thank you very much for uploading this vid on yt.
