Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813–88) was a French composer and pianist. Alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, he was among the leading virtuoso pianists in Paris. His career was marked by his occasional long withdrawals for personal reasons from public performance, and from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions, virtually all of which are for the keyboard. During this period he published his collections of large-scale studies in all the major keys (Op. 35) and all the minor keys (Op. 39). The latter includes his Symphony for Solo Piano and Concerto for Solo Piano, considered among his masterpieces, of great musical and technical complexity. Alkan's attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work. He was the first composer to incorporate Jewish melodies in art music. Fluent in Hebrew and Greek, he devoted much time to a complete new translation of the Bible into French. After his death (which according to a persistent myth was caused by a falling bookcase), his music was neglected, but since the late 1960s many pianists have recorded it and brought it back into the repertoire. (Full article...)
... that the two-part gay pornographic film Out of Athens was loosely based on the director John Rutherford's past experiences in Greece as a young man?
The Straw-necked Ibis(Threskiornis spinicollis) is a nomadic bird of the ibis and spoonbill family Threskiornithidae which can be found in Australia, New Guinea, and parts of Indonesia. They eat a variety of food, including molluscs, frogs, grasshoppers, crickets, and locusts.
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