Countless umbrellas, pils of jumble and two grand pianos stacked one upon another found in Erik Satie's apartment after his death were the inspiration of this new release. Pianist Tamar Halperin and producer Guy Sternberg strip down Satie's compositions into individual voices, play them on various instruments and stack the pieces on top of each other. Their goal is to find out what Satie's music would sound like, were it composed in modern times. Halperin and Sternberg want to reflect Satie's influence on the various generations of artists that followed him. Satie was a composer who blurred the lines between Classical Art music and non-classical, popular styles.
“A Riveting Piano Recital” (The New York Times, 2017) David Greilsammer’s new album venture, Labyrinth, is a project that he has been developing since 2017 in a number of concerts given in New York, at the Ravinia Festival, Illinois, in Lancaster and Sheffield, and at the Flagey in Brussels. The fascinated listener can follow this trail here, while keeping hold of the thread and following the light, encountering composers both well and less well known, from every period and style, with whole works and ephemeral fragments cunningly interwoven. While reconnoitering music by Beethoven, Janácek, Satie and Bach, we also have the surprise of a first world performance of Repetition Blindness by Ofer Pelz – specially commissioned for the program – and of a piano arrangement by Jonathan Keren of Chaos by Jean-Féry Rebel (also a first performance) as well as George Crumb’s mesmeric Magic Circle of Infinity.
Hélène Boschi’s repertoire was broad-based, ranging from the Baroque (François Couperin, Jean Philippe Rameau, Johann Sebastian Bach) to contemporary music. Her favorite composers of the Viennese Classical era were undoubtedly Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert; strangely, it seems she left behind no Beethoven recordings. One notable fact about Boschi is that she was the first female pianist to record the works of Padre Antonio Soler (1729-1783), receiving the 1952 Grand Prix du Disque in honor of her achievement. As for the nineteenth century, her passionate readings of Schumann are of the utmost importance; but Carl Maria von Weber and Muzio Clementi also captured her attention, as did Frédéric Chopin and Emmanuel Chabrier and the Impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Modern classics were also integral to her repertoire – as were the works of her immediate contemporaries. Luigi Dallapiccola dedicated his 1952 piano composition Quaderno di Annalibera to Hélène Boschi, Claude Ballif paid her that honor with his Fourth Sonata op. 31
Dirk Altmann is a master of French clarinet. The release of this music seems to point to the artist’s love for the French capital, as each track in this recital-like compilation has a connection to Paris. In his artistic manner, Altmann expresses his love for the city of love. He has even arranged some of these works himself for this combination of instruments. He is joined by a virtuosic ensemble of colleagues, which include pianist Mako Okamoto, violinist Gesa Jenne, bassist Ryutoaro hei, and accordionist Anne-Maria Holscher.
What might Franz Liszt possibly have in common with Erik Satie? The brilliant virtuoso and magician of pianistic opulence with the minimalistic ascetic of sound? Steffen Schleiermacher has discovered astonishing parallels between the former's late oeuvre and the latter's early oeuvre, which was taking shape at just about the same time. Together with the Gewandhaus concertmaster Andreas Seidel he is now presenting his astonishing new findings to the listening public - surprises are guaranteed. Now and again reminiscences of past times are heard, for example, in the ''Romance oubilee,'' before this forgotten romance unravels into ethereal nothingness. Moreover, Richard Wagner makes his presence felt again and again. Liszt's very mixed feelings about his son-in-law, whose death in Venice he foresaw like a visionary, is reflected in the two ''Sad Gondolas'' - and after Wagner actually had died in the heartrending and overwhelming ''R.W. - Venezia.'' Erik Satie, the house composer of the Wagner devotee Sar Peladan and his Rosicrucians, did precisely the opposite of what was expected of him. Statis sounds and sequences of unresolved chords without development hold his music in a permanent state of suspended animation managing without a beginning or an end. The door he opened for later generations of composers was one through which Franz Liszt delightfully would have gone if he had been somewhat younger.
Satie: Complete Piano Works, Vol. 4 (New Salabert Edition)
Grand Piano
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Sep 13, 2019
Everything I undertake misfires immediately. I produce dirty rubbish and that will accomplish nothing. So wrote Erik Satie in 1903 during a period of transition that saw him produce the last of his Rose + Croix style music in Verset laique & somptueux, but in making a living writing for the music halls, he also created hugely popular songs such as Je te veux. The works on this fourth volume of Satie's complete solo piano music were written between 1897 and 1906. They include rare theater music and tender waltzes that contrast with jaunty ragtime and pantomime dances. Nicolas Horvath began his music studies at the Academie de Musique et de Theatre Prince Rainier III, and at the age of 16 he caught the attention of the American conductor Lawrence Foster. His other mentors include a number of distinguished international pianists, including Liszt specialist Leslie Howard. He is the holder of a number of awards, including First Prize of the Scriabin and the Luigi Nono International Competitions. He has become noted for hosting concerts of unusual length, sometimes lasting over twelve hours, such as the performance of the complete piano music of Erik Satie at the Paris Philharmonie before an audience of 14,000 people and recently played together with Philip Glass also at the Paris Philharmonie.
Camino is guitarist Sean Shibe’s first PENTATONE album, an introspective programme exploring French-Spanish musical borders, a pilgrimage leading from Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante défunte, Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 and Gnossiennes 1 and 3, Poulenc’s Sarabande, De Falla’s Miller’s Dance and Homaje, pour le Tombeau de Debussy and José’s Pavana triste all the way to Mompou’s Canços i dansas 6 and 10, as well as his Suite compostelana.
Shibe has deliberately granted Mompou a central role on this album, as his music demonstrates that melancholy, aimlessness, and a whole host of other feelings are not things to be avoided or fixed or solved, but experiences to be felt deeply: not with sad nostalgia, but with genuine wonder and excitement at what this means for the future. In that respect, Camino also documents Shibe’s personal quest to overcome the challenges of a time dominated by COVID-19, and to ultimately see the world anew.
Multi-award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe brings a fresh and innovative approach to the traditional classical guitar, while also exploring contemporary music and repertoire for electric guitar. Camino is the first fruit of an exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE.
REVIEW:
Guitarist Sean Shibe has been known for daring programming, and an album of Spanish guitar music might seem a retreat to normalcy, but this is not the case. Shibe devises a program that brings in a wide variety of effects and moods and executes it all flawlessly. The program is both constantly shifting and entirely absorbing, and any stereotypes of Spanish music the listener may have will be gone by its end.
With Erik Satie, the connection between the beguilingly simple music and the sometimes very strange titles remains enigmatic: What is one to imagine by "Withered Embryos", "Penultimate Thoughts" or "Automatic Descriptions"? Steffen Schleiermacher does not even attempt an interpretation. In what is now the 8th installment of his Satie recording, he lets the associations work that the title, texts and playing instructions trigger. The result is music of that captivating clarity that Satie's avant-garde contemporaries admired so much in the eccentric maverick. The "cycles" collected here are mostly in three parts and all of them are surprisingly short, some move only in the five-tone range and seem to be almost children's pieces... And sometimes Satie borrows from deceased colleagues - and misleads both pianist and audience again: The motif of the "famous mazurka by Schubert" is - of course - neither by Schubert, nor is it a mazurka... "Sports et Divertissements" is completely out of the ordinary: Satie composed the total of 22 miniatures on commission as musical accompaniment to a collection of copperplate engravings by a famous fashion illustrator of his time. The pictures illustrate the leisure pleasures of the better-off, from tennis to sailing, and indeed one finds many a correspondence in the music - not without the usual eye-twinkling: the collection opens with an "unappetizing chorale"... For all the supposed simplicity of the music, Satie's manuscripts are true masterpieces of calligraphy, which, together with the curious playing instructions ("without blushing of the finger" - "from the tip of the eyes and held back in advance"), do not pass an artist like Steffen Schleiermacher by without leaving a trace. Incidentally, Satie expressly forbade the reading aloud of his bizarre texts - under threat of legal consequences...
• French composer Erik Satie composed some of the most mystifyingly beautiful music in the piano literature, much of which is in constant demand for live performance and recordings.
• Pianist Chisako Okano studied piano in her native Japan and then Germany, and leads a productive concertizing career.
This third volume of Erik Satie’s complete solo piano music using Satie scholar Robert Orledge’s new Salabert Edition focuses on music composed between 1892-1897, including theatrical scores such as the revolutionary uspud, and the Danses gothiques and famous Vexations written while the composer was hiding from a tempestuous love affair. The period closes with Satie composing in what he called “a more flexible and accessible way withthe final Gnossienne and the six Pieces froides.” Recognized at once as a great interpreter of Liszt’s music, Nicolas Horvath became in recent years one of the most sought after pianists of his generation. Holder of a number of awards, like the First Prize of the Scriabin and the Luigi Nono International Competitions, he frequently organizes events and concerts of unusual length, sometimes over twelve hours, such as Philip Glass complete piano music or Erik Satie’s Vexations.
For the fourth instalment in her acclaimed Satie cycle, Noriko Ogawa has gathered music written for the stage – from the pantomime Jack in the Box (1899) to the ballet Relâche (1924) – one of Satie’s last works. Several of the pieces exist in different scorings, but the piano versions heard here are all Satie’s own. Throughout the program, what comes across strongly is the influence of music hall and cabaret; composed in 1900, Prélude de “La mort de Monsieur Mouche” even offers a hint of the ragtime, one of the first appearances of the genre in European music. Stage projects are as a rule collaborative efforts, and among Satie’s collaborators were some of the leading names of the art world at the time, including Jean Cocteau, Picasso, the Dadaist poet and painter Francis Picabia, and film director René Clair. Satie’s score Cinéma has been called one of the first synchronized film scores.
Swedish award-winning percussionist Markus Leoson presents his own and other's arrangements for marimba of favourite composers such as Astor Piazzolla, Erik Satie and J. S. Bach, In addition, two of the Piazzolla pieces are arranged for vibraphone.
Markus Leoson was admitted at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm already at the age of 15, and graduated four years later in 1989. Since then he has performed nationally and internationally as both soloist and as orchestra musician. Besides his activity as a performing artist he is professor at Hochschulzentrum am Horn in Weimar, Germany.
Having recorded the 'great' French quartets of Debussy and Ravel (ALPHA295), the Van Kuijk Quartet now takes another path and explores treasures by Faure, Debussy, Satie, Ravel and Poulenc that were originally composed for piano or voice. The mark of the string quartet is secretly apparent in this programme, which includes Debussy's Petite Suite pour piano à quatre mains, Ravel's famous Pavane pour une infante defunte and well-known songs by Poulenc, Faure and Satie in transcriptions made especially for this recording by Emmanuel Francois, the Quartet's violist, and by Jean-Christophe Masson and Gildas Guillon. The Quartet also asked the jazz pianist and composer Baptiste Trotignon to create a work that would freely resonate alongside the styles of the composers whose works had been transcribed. An entire universe has now been re-created without any nostalgia or pastiche behind the first names of these composers, Ces Messieurs. The Van Kuijks have woven their instruments in and around these miniatures and here unfold a programme that is all lightness and delight.
The Stenzl brothers, Hans-Peter and Volker, invite you on a special kind of European journey with their new GENUIN album. In celebration of the anniversaries of Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, Moritz Moszkowski, and Dmitri Shostakovich, they have recorded suites and individual pieces by these great composers, who often humorously look beyond their own cultural horizons. With sophistication, elegance, care, and emotion, they weave dances, melodies, and stories from all corners of the world into their music. As a distinguished German duo performing internationally for more than 30 years, they present these little treasures with a keen eye for both the larger musical narratives and intricate details - genuinely cosmopolitan!
