Paul Wee plays Charles-Valentin Alkan
‘A celebration of the piano and its capabilities’ is how the pianist and barrister Paul Wee describes the two works by Charles-Valentin Alkan, brought together on this new disc. Alkan made his name as pianist in nineteenth-century Paris and seemed poised for a glittering career, but following a series of setbacks he withdrew from public life. His dazzling, glittering and extremely virtuosic music was forgotten along with him, and only began to emerge from obscurity in the 1960s and 1970s. Combined here are the Symphony and the Concerto for Solo Piano, two pinnacles of Alkan’s legacy. Unusually, included the individual movements of the two works as seven études within his 1857 collection Twelve studies in all the minor keys, Op.39. As a barrister, Paul Wee specialises in commercial law and appears regularly before courts and tribunals on behalf of clients including governments, corporations and financial institutions. Born in Australia, he began his piano studies at the age of four, continuing them in New York City at the Manhattan School of Music. Going on to study law at the University of Oxford, he attempts to balance his love for the piano alongside the demands of a busy international career in law. The recording is released by BIS Records on 1 November 2019, on disc (BIS-2465) as well as for streaming and downloading. The disc comes in a new type of all-cardboard packaging, designed to reduce the use of plastic. For information on the BIS website about Paul Wee, his new disc and the BIS ecopak click here: https://bis.se/performers/wee-paul/ https://bis.se/performers/wee-paul/alkan-concerto-and-symphony-for-solo-piano https://bis.se/introducing-bis-ecopak
