Word: alkan
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...Oddly, composers as a group seem to be unusually prone to bizarre deaths. Among others: Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) died of gangrene after smashing his foot with a heavy, canelike conductor's baton while leading an orchestra; Charles Valentin-Alkan (1813-1888) toppled a bookcase over on himself while reaching for a copy of the Talmud; Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) came down with cholera after drinking a glass of tap water; and Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961) suffered fatal brain damage when he became entangled in the leashes of two fighting dogs and fell on a sidewalk...
Child Actor. Like Alkan, Lewenthal has known his share of the frustrations of the creative life. Raised in Hollywood by his divorced mother (who was born in Paris just a block away from Alkan's home), he appeared as a bit actor in several Jackie Cooper films, attended a professional school "for spoiled movie brats." At 20, with prize money he won in piano competitions, he went to Manhattan to study with Olga Samaroff Stokowski, Leopold's first wife and a former pupil of Elie's, the fellow with the apes and the cockatoos. After his debut...
Decisive End. "If Alkan had to perform his works in public, I'm sure he would have been kinder to himself," says Lewenthal, whose impulsive, steel-wristed style of playing is just right for Alkan. For him the concert stage is an arena, his mission "to slay the black dragon with the 88 gleaming teeth." To create the "proper atmosphere," he has the lights dimmed until he is little more than a silhouette on stage. A tall, hulking figure with a luxuriant growth of swept-winged black hair, he almost leaps off the bench to hammer home a fistful...
Obviously, it is more than Alkan's music that drives Lewenthal toward the dragon; there is a sense of kinship with Alkan himself. "The life of Alkan," he says, "was full of galling disappointments and frustrations, of which its end was its most decisive event...
...Alkan died at the age of 74, when, as he reached for a volume of his beloved Talmud, the massive bookcase tipped over and crushed him to death...