Harry Halbreich, the eminent Belgian musicologist, has written that "It seems undeniable that around 1844-1845—as he entered his thirties—Alkan suffered a profound shock, of the sort one calls a revelation." He also notes that Alkan's retirement from the concert platform coincided with the beginning of what he called his "semitic studies," Talmudic studies and daily translations of Biblical verses that eventually came to encompass not only the entire Old and New Testaments, but the Apocrypha. Though hardly undeniable, this speculation is at least plausible and no doubt takes rise from the Sonate de Concert's third-movement inscription from the prophet Micah "…as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men." Alkan disguises his meaning as a mere poeticism by truncating the verse—Micah 5:7—which begins "And the remains of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew…" and in his usage alludes to the Jews of the Diaspora—such as himself—maintaining an ancient tradition in a foreign and often hostile environment. The rapt cantillation of this Adagio, the Sonate's heart—mysterious, exquisite, luminous—verifies by intensity of feeling what Halbreich posits from scant fact while ever-shifting patterns of cello pizzicati seem to confirm the suggestion of Kabbalistic significance. The remainder of the Sonate surrounds this long mystical moment with a varied but ever more worldly context. The first movement, a breathlessly paced Allegro molto, introduces three effusive yet motivically compact themes to furnish material for a richly extensive development, as if coruscations of a brilliant cotillion had been apprehended in the language of late Beethoven. The second movement Allegrettino is a winsomely purling barcarolle beset by sighs and hesitations, or as Raymond Lewenthal suggested, a sophisticated pre-Mahlerian bit of pseudo-naïveté similar to Alkan's miniature Petit conte. And in the nearly impossible prestissimo Finale alla saltarella, commentators have professed to hear everything from a dionysian affirmation of life to a Mephistophelian dance of death, as well as evocations of fifferari, zampogne, and "rude Italian gestures!" Alkan arranged this movement for piano four-hands in 1865. Completed on October 21, 1856, the Sonate was published (at Alkan's expense) by Richault the following year and given its premiere by the great Auguste Franchomme (dedicatee of Chopin's cello sonata) with the composer at the piano on April 27, 1857.

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