Erik Satie

[gvopedz]

Has anyone had a chance to listen to the new Erik Satie boxset, Tout Satie?  Any comments?

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=9994288&style=music

[king ubu]

Would be interested as well!

While looking for any write ups (without success) found this interesting article:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/05/erik-satie-jack-in-the-box-1926

[mikeweil]

The performances in this box definitely are all good. But my personal favourite for the piano solo music is Jean-Joel Barbier. 

If you're not a completist, try to get the Barbier box and the Naxos disc with the orchestral music, if you do not need to have every note he wrote.

[soulpope]

12 hours ago, mikeweil said:

The performances in this box definitely are all good. But my personal favourite for the piano solo music is Jean-Joel Barbier. 

If you're not a completist, try to get the Barbier box and the Naxos disc with the orchestral music, if you do not need to have every note he wrote.

Jean-Joel Barbier`s Satie is excellent indeed ...

[medjuck]

48 minutes ago, soulpope said:

Jean-Joel Barbier`s Satie is excellent indeed ...

How does he compare to Aldo Ciccolini?  (Who 50 years ago was Satie's greatest champion.)  BTW If you like Satie, I just discovered that Rene Claire's "Entr'acte"  with music by Satie is on Youtube.  For many years I could only  find it without music and even attempted to sync it up with a record myself. 

 

Edited January 25, 2016 by medjuck

[soulpope]

3 hours ago, medjuck said:

How does he compare to Aldo Ciccolini?  (Who 50 years ago was Satie's greatest champion.)  BTW If you like Satie, I just discovered that Rene Claire's "Entr'acte"  with music by Satie is on Youtube.  For many years I could only  find it without music and even attempted to sync it up with a record myself. 

 

Got rid of the Ciccolini quite some time ago - vaguely remember his Satie being more on the unemotional and starchy side though ....

[mikeweil]

I grew up with Ciccolini - his Satie was on local radio almost every afternoon. But he is on the polished, esthetic side, while Barbier is more direct, stark, and against the grain - he learned playing Satie from someone personally acquainted with the composer. Two different worlds. When I first heard Barbier I was stunned. 

[JSngry]

I only really know Satie's piano works (and btw - Mike's rec towards the Barbier is sollid, it's a jaw-dropper, proceed with total confidence, I say), so this 10 CD set at a low painer/no brainer price point just got one-clicked with gusto!

[medjuck]

How about every recording of Gymnopedie No 1 played at once?

 

http://disquiet.com/2016/01/15/brendan-landis-satie-gymnopedie-hey-exit/

Edited January 30, 2016 by medjuck

[JSngry]

That's getting into Perry Mason territory...

[mikeweil]

It shows how shaky the timing of most classical pianists really is.

[JSngry]

Shaky?

It's a mess, really, but I'd like to hear the individual recordings that were - quite arbitrarily - piled on top of each other before blaming the players rather than the process...and I suspect that it's not really "every" recording...for one thing, I don't hear Blood, Sweat & Tears in there at all.

[mikeweil]

I'm afraid he is not aware of BS&T, Herbie Mann & Bill Evans, or Yusef Lateef ... and I am aware that standards for timing are a lot different in classical music. Still, the concept of structuring rhythm via duration instead of the positioning of notes on a timeline sometimes often produces rather questionable results ... 

[medjuck]

I was interviewing Frank Zappa once when he was backstage with The Mothers and BS&T so began talking with the BS&T guys.  They knew nothing about Satie, just thought it was a cool piece of music. 

[optatio]

I have found a DCD with Ulrich Gumpert in my shelf and hear now:

[uli]

 

 

[soulpope]

7 hours ago, uli said:

 

 

IMO a interesting view on Satie ....

[king ubu]

new one coming out that might be interesting:

 

Owning the big EMI box by Ciccolini (and enjoying it a lot), I still have all of his Satie ... and I quite like it for what it is.

 

Another one I really like, and my first Satie, is this here by Reinbert de Leeuw:

On 31.1.2016 at 9:14 PM, optatio said:

I have found a DCD with Ulrich Gumpert in my shelf and hear now:

This one has been reissued, just in case:

just have to love the absurd poetry of automated translations - very much in spirit with Satie and with the dada centennial!

 

content listing of the new box:

Erik Satie & Friends

• A unique collection of 13CDs to celebrate Erik Satie's 150th birthday
• A box set of captivatingly idiosyncratic piano pieces, songs and ballets by Satie and his friends such as Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc
• Features famous and popular pieces such as Vexation, a forerunner of Minimalism or the simple, haunting Gymnopédies (1888) and Gnossiennes (1890) who have become universally familiar from their use in TV adverts and movies
• Five of the discs for the first time on CD
• Plus a 1950 historic recording (CD1) of Francis Poulenc playing not only his own piano pieces but also those of his friend Erik Satie

Erik Satie, that endearing French (though actually half-Scottish) revolutionary, has been credited with starting European musical history all over again. In 2016 the musical world will celebrate his 150th birthday. Sony Classical is marking the occasion with a 13-CD box set of his captivatingly idiosyncratic piano pieces, songs and ballets, which places the composer in his unique cultural context – the astonishing artistic effervescence of early 20th-century Paris.

Satie was a famous eccentric, who wore only grey velvet suits, ate only white food and founded his own one-member church. He supported himself (barely) by playing at cabarets. It was there he met Claude Debussy, who became a close friend and fell under Satie’s influence. Those cabaret evenings can be detected in Satie’s own charming songs, performed in this collection by some of the finest French singers of the 20th century: baritone Pierre Bernac, accompanied by Francis Poulenc, and soprano Régine Crespin, accompanied by Philippe Entremont. Satie also left his mark on the music of Maurice Ravel and the young composers known as Les Six, including Poulenc. Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc are all featured in this set along with Satie. Indeed CD 1 is a historic 1950 recording of Francis Poulenc playing not only his own piano pieces but also those of his friend Erik Satie.

Satie also befriended enfant terrible Jean Cocteau after the poet-artist was smitten with the composer’s Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear – a work included twice in this collection in performances by pianists Robert and Gaby Casadesus (a historic mono recording as well as a modern stereo one). Other typically oddball Satie titles include Bureaucratic Sonatina, The Trap of Medusa, The Woman Who Talks Too Much, Veritable Flabby Preludes (for a Dog), Automatic Descriptions and Desiccated Embryos – all heard here in authoritative performances by French pianists Philippe Entremont and Daniel Varsano. In 1917 Satie collaborated with Cocteau and Pablo Picasso on the ballet Parade for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, resulting in a scandal that led to Satie spending eight days in jails for being a “cultural anarchist”. After the premiere, Cocteau overheard a woman say, “If I’d known it was going to be as silly as that, I’d have brought the kids.” Satie’s disarmingly surrealistic score for Parade, which includes a typewriter, a foghorn and milk bottles, makes two appearances in the new Sony set, with Philippe Entremont conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1970 and a historic recording from 1949 with the Houston Symphony conducted by ballet specialist Efrem Kurtz.

Satie was largely forgotten after his death in 1925. But he enjoyed a renaissance in the 1960s and was elevated to cult status with the imprimatur of avant-garde composer John Cage, who put on concerts of his works and declared him indispensable to the development of contemporary music. Pieces such as Vexations – a page of music with an instruction to be played 840 times – are considered forerunners of Minimalism. Satie’s most popular piano pieces, such as the simple, haunting Gymnopédies (1888) and Gnossiennes (1890) – which evoke classical ancient Greece through the simplicity, repetition and modal harmonies – have become universally familiar from their use in TV adverts and movies. Debussy’s orchestrations of the Gymnopédies are also found in this collection.

Each recording in this exceptional new set of 13 CDs – featuring facsimile LP-sleeves – comes from the best source. Five of these discs, including a bonus of historic mono recordings, are essentially appearing on CD for the first time.

Set contents:

DISC 1: ML 4399 - « Meet the composer » - Francis Poulenc plays Poulenc & Satie
DISC 2: ML 4484 - « Soirée Francaise » Pierre Bernac, baritone with Francis Poulenc, piano in songs of Poulenc, Debussy, Chabrier and Satie
DISC 3: ML 4854 - Gold & Fitzdale play music for 2 pianos by Debussy, Poulenc, Milhaud & Satie
DISC 4: MS 6323 - Robert and Gaby Casadesus – French Music for Piano Four Hands by Debussy, Chabrier, Satie & Fauré
DISC 5: LSC-2945 - Music from France for Oboe and Orchestra – John de Lancie – London Symphony Orchestra – André Previn
DISC 6: LSC-3127 - William Masselos plays Satie
DISC 7: M 30294 - Philippe Entremont conducts Satie
DISC 8: M 32070 - Philippe Entremont: « A la Française » - Debussy, Ravel, Chabrier, Satie, Fauré, Poulenc
DISC 9: M 36666 - Régine Crespin, soprano & Philippe Entremont – Songs by Ravel & Satie
DISC 10: M 36694 - Daniel Varsano - Satie Piano Music
DISC 11: M 37247 - Philippe Entremont plays Satie
DISC 12: ARL1-2783 - “The French Touch” – National Philharmonic Orchestra – Charles Gerhardt – Music by Ravel, Satie, Fauré
DISC 13: EARLY RECORDINGS

from: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Erik-Satie-Friends/dp/B01A6NG7WU/

Edited February 9, 2016 by king ubu

[mikeweil]

I'd like to have the first disc with Poulenc playing and the historical recordings from the last disc from this box - if you buy it, please make me a copy .

A rather lackluster compilation - the Erato/EMI box at least has his "complete works", or what could be called so. 

 

Edited February 9, 2016 by mikeweil

[king ubu]

Will if I do.