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The picture in one’s mind of Erik Satie towards the end of his life is probably as vivid as his music. Making his way to his modest digs in the outskirts of Paris, there is the lone eccentric, neatly attired with his white beard, monocle and bowler hat.
Although Satie’s piano music includes some of his better-known pieces, it does not come round that often in the form of a dedicated recital disc from a major recording label, so Bertrand Chamayou’s new release is welcome.
In choosing items to be included, the French pianist came up with the idea of interleaving Satie’s pieces with similarly short morsels by American iconoclast John Cage, a Satie admirer. As Chamayou notes, the two of them are like “UFOs in the world of music, because they envisioned music through a completely different prism”.
The Satie pieces include two of his most often-played sets, the Gnossiennes and the three Gymnopédies, both early works dating from the 1880s. Here are short, wispy, hypnotic pieces, exploring a web of interrelated ideas, that worm their way into the brain. Alongside, there are a slow tango, a dreamy sarabande, and the three Véritables préludes flasques (pour un chien), ending with a touch of the cakewalk, a reminder of Satie’s years as a café pianist.
The Cage pieces are like second cousins, the seemingly aimless doodling of In a landscape inducing a Satie-like hypnosis of its own. Time and space stretch out here, divorced from the concerns of more worldly composers.
★★★★☆
‘Letter(s) to Erik Satie’ is released by Erato