Charles-Valentin Alkan was a French composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life.
Alkan's father, Alkan Morhange
Report on Alkan's 1819 solfège audition at the Paris Conservatoire. (Archives Nationales, Paris)
Report on Alkan's 1820 keyboard audition at the Paris Conservatoire. (Archives Nationales, Paris)
George Sand
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation".
Daguerreotype, c. 1849
Chopin's birthplace in Żelazowa Wola
Chopin's father, Nicolas Chopin, by Mieroszewski, 1829
Chopin plays for the Radziwiłłs, 1829 (painting by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1887)