Anyone familiar with the non-piano-solo instrumental works of Charles-Valentin Alkan will know how accomplished he was as a chamber and orchestral music composer.
Well now, we have two more examples of his youthful compositional prowess in digital realisations of the two cantatas he submitted for the Prix de Rome. Unfortunately one of them is incomplete but, although Alkan's competition efforts were unsuccessful, they at last give us a good idea of Alkan's efforts.
They really deserve real performances - unfortunately a plan to record them at Toccata Classics has fallen through. You can hear the digitizations here:
- Hermann et Ketty (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTJGjQk0n04) (1832)
- L'entrée en loge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wjW7Krhl_I) (1834) - incomplete realisation
4c
Weirdly, the IMSLP entry on Hermann et Ketty didn't attribute Pastoret as the text author...