Overshadowed somewhat by his stupendous Op. 39 set of etudes in minor keys, Alkan's dozen Etudes in Major Keys, Op. 35, nevertheless display a startlingly original individuality. Published in 1848, these etudes explore and consolidate a technique—requiring absolute finger independence, superhuman rapidity, and a paradoxical ability to cover the entire keyboard simultaneously—for wringing from the mid-nineteenth century piano, with its weak sustaining power, a piquancy of detail etched upon a canvas of orchestral richness. Moreover, as an apostle of the style sévère, Alkan designed these etudes to be played in a light, sec, rhythmically precise manner antithetical to the heavily pedaled, rubato-dimpled Lisztian style which had begun to supplant it at the time of composition. Liszt is alluded to in the first etude, an Allegretto in A, which Alkan scholar and pianist Ronald Smith has suggested calling "Wallenstadt revisited"—one cannot resist the impression that Au lac de Wallenstadt from the first book of Liszt's Années de pèlerinage might have been lurking somewhere in the back of Alkan's mind." The resemblance to the "Églogue" from the same collection is even more pronounced and may, indeed, constitute parody. In pointed contrast to Liszt's purling lushness, Alkan's piece requires deft voicing (amid a swirl of scalar and broken-chord figures) and a prim, rhythmically steady élan to come off. The varieties of staccato demanded throughout the set—against the rival claims of a genuine (that is, finger-held) legato—reveal the forgotten face of Romantic pianism. This preoccupation reaches its apogee in the A flat etude, where a single hand must sustain an eloquent legato melody while providing a staccato accompaniment ranging over an octave and a half without resorting to the pedal! Observing that this is by no means a mere technical freak, Alkan's authoritative expositor, Raymond Lewenthal, declared: "This is a perfect work, perfect as music, perfect as the etude it sets out to be. It is an exquisite garden scene, a love duet accompanied by softly plucking lutes—or théorbes if you must be recherché—in a fabled land of griffins, fountains and unicorns." In contrast to this exquisite delicacy, fullness of texture is often achieved by rapid octaves in both hands, as in the mighty Contrapunctus in C sharp, a two-part invention relieved by a trio in thirds, or the piston-like Allegro barbaro in F, which may have prompted Bartók's like-titled piece. The final Etude in E, with its rapid octaves against a what would retrospectively be called a stride accompaniment—the parts changing hands Godowsky-style—is notable for its giddy effervescence. Another sort of texture is essayed in the Etude in C, which Smith calls "the most testing exercise in tremolando ever devised." Yet another is found in the widely spaced writing of the B flat etude, alternating the extreme reaches of the hand in a way later used by Brahms. With these resources in hand, so to speak, Alkan treats the listener to a quaint yet titanic parody of the popular parlor pieces of his day in the E flat "L'Incendie au village voisin"—"fire in the neighboring village"—which manages to be simultaneously hilarious and what the critic and composer Bernard van Dieren described as "an exquisite tone painting like one of the movements of Harold in Italy" by Berlioz.

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