Alkan's miniatures tend toward the pungently aphoristic in giving one the gist of the matter without elaboration. L'homme aux sabots (The Man in Clogs), the 23rd of Motifs (48), "Esquisses," for instance, plays but half-a-minute, just long enough to palpably, and risibly, evoke a rustic clodhopper clopping through the aural terrain. Alkan subtitled this tiny piece "D'un pas ordinaire," though the melody the clogs accompany is sufficiently piquant to merit development. He comes. He goes. Alkan leaves it at that. Petit conte (short story, fairy tale), published in 1859 by Richault without an opus number, on the other hand, plays for nearly four minutes -- a miniature in any other composer's oeuvre, which, in Alkan's masterly hands takes on the pith, involvement, suggestive richness, and repletion of a tale by Andersen, La Fontaine, or Perrault. Liltingly, shimmeringly spun of faux-naïf gossamer, its delicate drama is all the more moving for being inexplicit, though an obvious happy ending gathers all loose ends into a coda suddenly rife with nostalgia. Alkan's sophistication underwrites every bar, but the sustained, non-ironic il était une fois mood is relatively rare in his work and all the more remarkable in appearing in the same year with the satirical Capriccio alla soldatesca and its mordant companion, Le tambour bat aux champs; the Menuets (3) mimicking psychological disorientation; and the savage Super flumina Babylonis evoking the smashing of heads of infidel children against stones. ~ Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide
