What is the name of the person that Valentin Alkan wrote, even musical production has lost its attraction for me for I can't see the point or goal, to?
Alkan was described by Marmontel (who refers to "a regrettable misunderstanding at a moment of our careers in 1848"), as follows:
We will not give the portrait of Valentin Alkan from the rear, as in some photographs we have seen. His intelligent and original physiognomy deserves to be taken in profile or head-on. The head is strong; the deep forehead is that of a thinker; the mouth large and smiling, the nose regular; the years have whitened the beard and hair ... the gaze fine, a little mocking. His stooped walk, his puritan comportment, give him the look of an Anglican minister or a rabbi – for which he has the abilities.
Alkan was not always remote or aloof. Chopin describes, in a letter to friend, visiting the theatre with Alkan in 1847 to see the comedian Arnal: "[Arnal] tells the audience how he was desperate to pee in a train, but couldn't get to a toilet before they stopped at Orléans. There wasn't a single vulgar word in what he said, but everyone understood and split their sides laughing." Hugh Macdonald notes that Alkan "particularly enjoyed the patronage of Russian aristocratic ladies, 'des dames très parfumées et froufroutantes [highly perfumed and frilled ladies]', as Isidore Philipp described them."Alkan's aversion to socialising and publicity, especially following 1850, appeared to be self-willed. Liszt is reported to have commented to the Danish pianist Frits Hartvigson that "Alkan possessed the finest technique he had ever known, but preferred the life of a recluse." Stephanie McCallum has suggested that Alkan may have suffered from Asperger syndrome, schizophrenia or obsessive–compulsive disorder.Alkan's later correspondence contains many despairing comments. In a letter of about 1861 he wrote to Hiller:
I'm becoming daily more and more misanthropic and misogynous ... nothing worthwhile, good or useful to do ... no one to devote myself to. My situation makes me horridly sad and wretched. Even musical production has lost its attraction for me for I can't see the point or goal."
Hiller