Famous today for his Trois Gymnopédies, Erik Satie was an eccentric and solitary figure who was nevertheless viewed by some as a prophet of French musical modernism, his striking creativity championed by Ravel and Debussy. From tragedy and trauma in his early years, through his time as a pianist and Parisian provocateur at Le Chat Noir cabaret, and as house composer to the mystical Rose+Croix cult and beyond, Satie’s eventful life is told in this fascinating revue of a composer whose unique music is still influential today. The narrative, written by musicologist Davinia Caddy and read by actor Lucy Scott, is illustrated with musical excerpts from works including Gymnopédie No. 3, Gnossienne No. 3, Sports et Divertissements, Trois Morceaux en forme de poire and Relâche, among others.

These two discs profile French composer Erik Satie, and include his famous works Gymnopedies, gnossiennes et autres pieces pour piano.

Includes work(s) by Erik Satie.

Satie’s personal eccentricities have never masked the fact that his music was both revolutionary and anticipatory of later artistic movements, principally Minimalism, Surrealism and Theatre of the Absurd. His piano music offers a perfect distillation of these elements. The Allegro is his earliest known work, offering his first use of quotations, a favored device. The extended pieces Le Fils des etoiles and uspud derive from incidental music, glorying in parodic and grotesque scenes, while his ‘humoristic’ phase of the 1910s is explored in Cinq Grimaces. Only Satie could attempt to fuse a fugue with a waltz, as he does in the Fugue-valse. Duanduan Hao was born in China in 1990. He began his piano lessons when he was four and by the age of six was already drawing attention to his precocious ability. He then studied in Shanghai and in Paris, going on to win many prizes in international piano competitions. He currently lives in New York and studies at The Juilliard School and Columbia University.

Satie: Piano Works (Selection)

Classical Music

Born at a time when the music world was under the spell of Richard Wagner’s music, Erik Satie was perhaps the first French composer who chose aesthetics and a style that ignored the rampant Wagnerism. His piano works, short, hieratic, sometimes disarmingly simple, often bearing ironic and misleading titles, have inspired many musicians, such as Claude Debussy, who was Satie’s friend and admirer. This release offers some of the French composer’s more renowned works, such as the beautiful Trois Gymonopedies and the remarkable Six Gnossiennes, the long-lasting popularity of which is perhaps the best proof of Satie’s absolutely original talent. These works are presented by young pianist Giacomo Scinardo, whose highly successful recent recording of works by Mussorgsky was described by Fanfare as “exuberantly playful.”

On this release Scott Morris plays new arrangements of Erik Satie’s music for guitar with soprano and oboe. “Morris plays with considerable elegance and charm […]” (American Record Guide). Additional musicians include Grammy-winning Andrew York from the LA Guitar Quartet.

Released in 2016 - the 150th anniversary of the birth of Erik Satie - the first volume of the series was warmly greeted by reviewers worldwide, who paised the clarity of Noriko Ogawa's interpretations as well as teh crystalline sound of her chosen instrument, an Erard grand piano from 1890. Like its predecessor, this second instalment takes in music from different phases of the composer's career, including the very early Three Sarabandes from 1887. A few years later Satie became involved with an esoteric society called ''The Catholic Rosy Cross of the Temple and the Grail'' for which he composed works such as the Sonneries de la Rose+Crois. Throughout his life, Satie identified strongly with children and famously said of himself that he ''came into the world very young, in an age that was very old''. In 1913, during what is often termed his ''humorous'' period he composed the four sets of children's pieces included on this album. Hailing from the same period are the two sets of ''Flabby preludes for a dog'' as well as the suite Sports et divertissements. Often regarded as one of the finest examples of Satie's art, this consists of a prelude and 20 musical snapshots depicting different sports and leisure activities, including golf, fishing and dancing. The suite was first published as a collector's album, accompanied by illustrations by Charles Martin and Satie's own prose poetry and calligraphy.

The idiosyncratic French composer's complete songs, his one chamber work, his complete 4-hand music, the ballet music and Socrate (in it's only available recording for multiple voices and orchestra). Frank Glazer and Richard Deas, piano; Froment/Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg.

This collection of classical favorites of Satie's work serves as a compilation of his famous works made available by Ellen Sejersted Bodtker, Gabor Eckhardt, Klara Kormendi renowned classical talent.

Includes work(s) by Erik Satie.

A jazz musician - pianist and composer - plays Erik Satie. His stations: SOK, Synopsis, the Ulrich Gumpert workshop band (celebrated on international Festivals), the duo with G�nter Sommer; the trio with Radu Malfatti and Tony Oxley. Gumpert performing in a duo with Dietmar Diesner and Gumpertsolo, playing his own piano music - plain pieces of deep urge. It seems as if Gumpert inevitably had to come to Satie. It is not scores which are the essence of Satie's music but his attitudes. A pianist who feels strange with Satie's nature, can play the pieces key by key from the score and though disfigure them past recognition. l can't name any musician who is more able to play the early works of Erik Satie, than Ulrich Gumpert.

For Erik Satie, his whole life was a single theatre. Even his whimsical outfit was carefully staged: always the same suit, with melon and umbrella, but never unfolded to protect it . Steffen Schleiermacher now directs the spotlight on Satie's seventh series of piano works to his compositions for the stage, including Satie's last work ever, "Relâche", which brought together theatre, music and film in what was then a radically modern multimedia way. Steffen Schleiermacher is a pianist, composer, and festival and concert promoter. He studied piano (Gerhard Erber), composition (Siegfried Thiele, Friedrich Schenker) and conducting (Günter Blumhagen) at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Academy of Music in Leipzig from 1980 until 1985. He was master pupil for composition with Friedrich Goldmann at the Academy of Arts in Berlin during 1986/87 and for piano with Aloys Kontarsky at the Cologne Academy of Music during 1989/90. Steffen Schleiermacher has concertized as a soloist with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Deutsche Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Münchner Philharmoniker, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and other orchestras under Vladimir Ashkenazy, Friedrich Goldmann, Ingo Metzmacher, Wladimir Jurowski and Fabio Luisi. Schleiermacher's recordings amount to more than 80 albums.

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.