As a young virtuoso, the Frenchman Charles-Valentin Alkan was one of the leading pianists in Paris. Between 1839 and 1843, for unknown reasons, he withdrew completely from public view. On his celebrated return to the concert stage in 1844, according to newspaper reports, Liszt, Chopin, Sand and Dumas, amongst others, were in the audience. In the same year he also wrote ‘Le Chemin de Fer’, which was probably the first musical representation of a railway. Like his popular ‘Douze Études dans les to...