Listening to Alkan's music-even score study-is one thing.

But learning-STUDYING-his works make a totally different ballgame. You realize SO much more in his music. I thought I knew about the G Major Etude Op. 35 No. 3, but once I actually learned it and saw all his various expression commands, harmonic language, and very cunning transitions, it really showed me that he knew what he was doing just like any other composer, standard or nonstandard.

My list would say: Chopin/Liszt/Brahms/Schumann/(If you count Schubert in the Romantic Era, he goes here)/Mendelssohn/Alkan/Other romantic composers.

To the above reference of the Concerto for Solo Piano, Alkan was very much a traditionalist and classicist, so in many ways it reflects Mozart's style. The "orchestral" outro is very much how Mozart would have probably composed an orchestral outro, except maybe with Alkan's strange attraction to "hurdy-gurdy" (as one music critic called it) final chord(s).

I never said I didn't like Alkan -did you read my post?- I just felt that he does not measure up to Liszt or Chopin.

Good grief my good mate, I went through a period wherein I listened to the Concerto every evening... Jack Gibbons. Wonderful recording. (Must have been back in 1999 when I was 17.) Why must I play Alkan? Do you not trust my score reading abilities, or -as a church musician- my sight-reading abilities?

But if you love Alkan more than I do, then good on you.

(Had to talk with my mum on the mobile for an hour when trying to make a post here. All I get is 'Jason this' and 'Jason that'. She's a pain.)

Anyway, there's something about you -which I love in a sense- which distrusts youngsters. But I thought I had passed the age of 19 wherein I really knew it all.