This recording is also available as a mini disc.
This CD includes a multimedia portion.
THE GUITARIST could be described as a record of brooding reflection and pastoral solitude with echoes of ancient Greece a recurrent motif. It also demonstrates that one can plan a wonderfully varied yet coherent guitar recital without recourse to the usual Bach transcriptions and Spanish chestnuts.
No one is better equipped to do this than John Williams. As much an ambassador of the guitar as a player, he puts his commitment to new music for the instrument to good use here, the major dividend being the 'Koyunbaba' of Italian composer Carlo Domeniconi. Inspired by Turkish themes and landscapes, the four-movement suite employs an unusual C sharp minor tuning to haunting, original effect.
The 'Stele' of Australian Phillip Houghton are moody evocations of the Greek coastline and ancient monuments to gods, demons and sailors lost at sea, while the 'Epitafios' of Mikis Theodorakis eulogize the more recently departed with the direct simplicity of folk music. Rounded off with a suite of medieval tunes and a particularly successful arrangement of Satie's third 'Gymnopedie,' THE GUITARIST leads one down a darker, less traveled road full of drama and beauty.

Coming off the immense success of the Billboard-charting Let me tell you — which received rave reviews from the New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Wall St. Journal, and many more — Barbara Hannigan turns her attention to the work of Erik Satie as the musical world celebrates his 150th birthday. The disc focuses on one of the minimalist composer’s few elaborate masterpieces: the almost-forgotten vocal piece “Socrate,” on three Plato dialogues in French translation.

In celebration of Satie's 150th birthday, the venerable label Winter & Winter recorded a selection of works with the world-famous soprano Barbara Hannigan and pianist Reinbert de Leeuw, known for his outstanding Satie interpretations. “Socrate” is the central focus of the album, heard alongside “Trois Mélodies” from 1886, “Trois Autres Mélodies” from 1886–1906, and “Hymne” from 1891. Barbara Hannigan and Reinbert de Leeuw are two of the most important representatives of the contemporary classical music world.

An homage to Erik Satie and Robert Desnos - A sensuous sound journey by the Ensemble European Music Project "Inside the Dream" evolved out of a live multimedia performance with a multichannel sound installation, voice, and an ensemble augmented by modern "club electronics." This CD presents the musical part of the performance. At it's center are several early songs by Erik Satie, along with his famous "Gnossiennes". Satie's compositions are flanked by J�rgen Gr�zinger's pieces, consciously written with a similar gesture, making the CD something of an homage to Satie, who was both a forefather of modern music and a close friend of the surrealists. J�rgen G�rzinger is fascinated by the French surrealists and especially by Robert Desnos. "Inside the Dream" is an associative approach to and transformation of the atmosphere of longing, eroticism, passion, adventure, and melancholy which are presented in Desnos's poetry - all mixed with a touch of humor. The liner notes in German, English and French are illustrated with photographs by P.J. Boman from his book "Muse: Desire and Severance".

On the occasion of Erik Satie's 150th birthday, Fumio Yasuda embarks on a quest for hidden works of music and adapts rarely performed compositions for his piano trio: pieces that are well worth their discovery! Following a tour through Spain and France, Yasuda recorded this album in Bordeaux in October, 2016. In the early 20th century, Erik Satie was part of the Dadaist circle of artists in Paris. He worked with René Clair, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Léonide Massine, Man Ray and, most importantly, Jean Cocteau. Fumio Yasuda selected Satie's music for René Clair's filme masterpieces "Entr'acte" as well as the works "Dance de travers" and "Airs à faire fuir" from "“Pièces froides" and several additional compositions to arrange and interpret them in a completely new style. Satie has an entirely different view from many of his colleagues: He is convinced that a composer has no right to waste the time his audience dedicates to him. And so he develops his idea of background music - and calls it "Musique d'ameublement" (which translates approximately as "Music as furniture", or "Musical furniture"). Music is meant to be in a room just like a table or a chair. Satie rejects finesse and virtuosity. "Everyone will tell you that I'm not a musician. And they're right." Satie has a very special place in the history of music. Without seeming obtrusive, Fumio Yasuda bows to Erik Satie and shows his respect fo rthe great master, who so often is little appreciated since his compositional style is misunderstood or his oeuvre reduced to a few popular pieces. For many listeners, some pieces will be a new discovery, thanks to Fumio Yasuda's selection.

On the present release, a jazz musician, pianist, and composer plays Erik Satie. Born in 1945, Ulrich Gumpert first began piano lessons with his father before going on to study in Weimar where he majored in French horn. Beginning in 1967 he performed in various bands with Klaus Lenz, and in 1971 co-founded the jazz rock group SOK. That same year he founded SYNOPSIS, from which the ZENTRALQUARTETT emerged in 1984. Ulrich Gumpert has developed an idiosyncratic personal style by using the experience of jazz and European music history in an original way. "Gumpert, who as a person never pushes himself to the fore, is also characterized by his modest reserve on his instrument. Without becoming particularly loud, particularly weird or particularly fast, he has found his very own tone: lyrical, warm, substantial, to the point. A quiet giant of German jazz." (Jazzclub Tonne)

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.

Satie: Works for Piano

Eric Satie, known as a brilliant pianist and composer, was an integral part of the 20th century Parisian avant-garde. Included in this box of Satie piano works are the Ogives, inspired by the Notre Dame cathedral; the hauntingly beautiful works of Trois Nocturnes, and the calming Reverie du Pauvre. Satie's compositional brilliance, along with Kormendi's virtuosity will surely make this a treasured item for collectors and classical music loves alike.

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.

Always inventive and innovation-seeking, Erik Satie's earliest works show traces of Chopin as an influence but he soon came to reject virtuosity and tradition, choosing instead to remain with the quintessentially French traits of simplicity, clarity, precision, elegance and economy. Satie's hautingly beautiful floating melodies and modal tonalities are unforgettably compelling, combining bygone classical ages with Parisian sophistication. This landmark recording uses both a new and corrected edition of Satie' smusic and Cosima Wagner's own 1881 Erard piano, his instrument maker of choice. Recognized as a leading interpreter of Liszt's music, Nicola Horvath has in recen tyears become one of the most sought-after pianists of his generation. Holder of a number of awards, including 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, and composers from a number of countries have written for him.

Classical Music

PIANO WORKS

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.

Includes work(s) by Erik Satie.

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.

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.

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...

Classical Music

For me, the real "Best of Satie" would include at least excerpts from the opera Socrate and the ballet Parade. But this is a nice overview of the eccentric composer's keyboard gems, culled from Klára Körmendi's excellent Satie cycle for Naxos. Many pianists take Satie's wistful melodic sensibility as license to let the music wallow and droop. Körmendi will have none of that. Her sensitive, expertly colored playing brings uncommon, refreshing urgency to the first three Nocturnes, the well-worn Gymnopédies, and all six Gnossiennes. Moreover, she has a way of making the composer's idiosyncratic expressive indications audible without hitting listeners over the head. The disc concludes with the Gymnopédies in their familiar orchestrations by Debussy (Nos. 1 & 3) and Roland-Manuel (No. 2). The French orchestra plays rather patchily in the first but redeems itself with some very nice playing in the other two. No. 3 features a lovely oboe soloist surrounded by silvery, reed-organ-like high strings. If you're looking for a Satie piano music start-up kit, this is the one. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Includes work(s) by Erik Satie.

• 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.

Classical Music

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

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.

Erik Satie's influence, once barely acknowledged, has now permeated nearly every corner of modern music. Best known for the sensual simplicity of his tender Gymnopedies, such seeming naivety masked a colorful, and frequently, complex life and artistic vision. The experimental composer John Cage famously called Satie "indispensable," citing him as a profound inspiration for his own groundbreaking work. Satie's eccentricities were part of his charm, and this whimsy often seeped into his work. In Embryons desseches (Dried Embryos), for instance, he included absurd instructions in the score, phrases like "on the tip of your tongue" or "open your head," as well as giving his works absurd titles like Effronterie and Prelude canin, gleefully written to deflate the precious seriousness of classical music traditions. In contrast, there are works like Pieces froides (1897) that anticipate the rhythmic minimalism of Philip Glass and his visionary 5 Nocturnes (1919), the final series of his cyclically organized piano pieces composed using a highly complex system rigorously guiding the interplay of melody (right hand) and harmonic accompaniment (left hand). Even today, there are many surprises to be discovered in Satie's oeuvre. This specially curated program is brilliantly realized by Christina Bjorkoe, one of Denmark's leading musicians. Much in demand as a recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with symphony orchestras, ClassicsToday praised Bjorkoe for her dynamism and passion. Her extensive discography includes critically acclaimed recordings of works spanning the piano repertoire from Beethoven to Borup-Jorgensen.

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.

For the fifth volume in her series of Erik Satie's piano music, Noriko Ogawa reaches back to an early period in the composer's life. A large part of the program comes from Satie's so-called mystical period. Influenced by medieval plainsong and avoiding all pathos, Satie resorted to austere melodies based on rhythms and harmonies simplified to the extreme; he turned away from the concepts of development and variation in favour of simple repetition of perfectly symmetrical phrases. In other words, he broke completely with the classical-romantic tradition. In its purity and abstraction, Satie’s music from this period seems surprisingly modern by comparison with that of his contemporaries. The title of this volume is Ésoterik Satie, a nickname given to the composer during the period when he began a collaboration with Joséphin Peladan, the grand-master of the ‘Rose-Croix catholique du temple et du graal’, an artistic movement close to symbolism and esotericism. Satie’s fascination for the Middle Ages is reflected not only in the music itself, but also in the titles of some works, such as Ogives (the pointed arches of Gothic architecture), Danses gothiques or Fête donnée par les Chevaliers Normand.

REVIEW:

Noriko Ogawa is a sure guide to these pieces. She plays them on an 1890 Erard piano, which has a bright, clear, rather shallow tone. The booklet is very informative, though the pieces are not played in the order in which they are discussed. These works are best taken a few at a time. Satie’s world is intense but it is also narrow, and the pieces here are all rather similar.

-- MusicWeb International

Bien qu'Erik Satie soit principalement reconnu pour son oeuvre de compositeur et pianiste, ses ecrits poetiques sont a l'image de sa musique : souvent courts, empreints d'un humour absurde et d'une grande sensibilite melancolique. La voix profonde et le timbre captivant de Francois Marthouret, se mele ici aux harmonies delicates du piano de Christiane Gugger. La complicite sensible entre l'acteur et la pianiste, souligne toute la musicalite et l'inattendu de ces ecrits iconoclastes signes par l'un des plus grands precurseurs de son epoque Augustin BONDOUX / Patrick FReMEAUX Although Erik Satie is primarily known for his work as a composer and pianist, his poetic writings reflect the same qualities as his music: often brief, tinged with absurd humor and deep melancholic sensitivity. The deep voice and captivating tone of Francois Marthouret blend here with the delicate harmonies of Christiane Gugger's piano. The sensitive rapport between the actor and the pianist highlights the musicality and unpredictability of these iconoclastic writings by one of the greatest pioneers of his time. Augustin BONDOUX / Patrick FReMEAUX GNOSSIENNE N�2 ET JE SUIS Ne a HONFLEUR - GNOSSIENNE N�4 - JE REGRETTE - GNOSSIENNE N�3 - LA JOURNeE D'UN MUSICIEN - VALSE-BALLET. SPORTS ET DIVERTISSEMENTS - CHORAL INAPPeTISSANT - LA BALANcOIRE - LA CHASSE - LA COMeDIE ITALIENNE - LE ReVEIL DE LA MARIeE - COLIN MAILLARD - LA PeCHE - LE YACHTING - LE BAIN DE MER - LE CARNAVAL - LE GOLF - LA PIEUVRE - LES COURSES - LES QUATRE COINS - LE PICNIC - LE WATER-CHUTE - LE TANGO - LE TRAiNEAU - LE FLIRT - LE FEU D'ARTIFICE - LE TENNIS. MUSIQUE SUR L'EAU - FANTAISIE-VALSE - ECHANGE D'IDeE - OGIVE N�1 - LES PeRIMeS - GNOSSIENNE N�5 - LE VERTIGE - SEUL a LA MAISON. LETTRE a DEBUSSY - 20 JUILLET 1903 - 14 AO�T 1903 - 17 AO�T 1903. AVANT-DERNIeRES PENSeES - IDYLLE a DEBUSSY - AUBADE a PAUL DUCAS - MeDITATION a ALBERT ROUSSEL. MICHELET ET LES ANIMAUX - PIeCE FROIDE N�2 - L'ARTISTE ET L'ENNUI - GNOSSIENNE N�1 - MESDAMES MESDEMOISELLES MESSIEURS - JE TE VEUX LETTRE a SUZANNE VALADON 11 MARS 1893 - SON BINOCLE.