Erik Satie S/D

those are later (1983-1986) re-recordings by ciccolini. the 2 CD piano works set compiles the original 1966-1971 recordings which introduced Satie to the record-buying public, I prefer the performances and the sequencing is more listenable.

he really is great. sometimes i like observing his music closely, while other times i'll throw him on in the backdrop

vexations, no haven't heard

That was also on LTM? If so, yes.

favorite sundar thread ever Erik Satie - Vexations

also seek out his 'Furniture Music'--orchestral ambient pieces way ahead of their time.

what release are those on?

radio 3 broadcast the entire vexations maybe 7 years ago. i think it started about 8.pm. i listened to a couple of hours of it.

LTM is a fantastically brilliant label that started off back in the early eighties as a quiet one-man operation releasing some of the obscurer post-punk stuff around, but now is mainly one of the best reissue labels for that time -- and earlier. Label boss James Nice has had a massive interest in futurism and avant-garde music for many years and over time has released more compilations and reissues of a variety of pieces under that rubric. There are a number of ILM threads on it but mostly we're talking about things like the Factory and Sarah label reissues. ;-)

Here's the label's homepage, and the Satie catalog is listed here. In the US and Canada, distribution is handled by Darla at very good prices.

xpost to me

also always been fond of the France Clidat 3 disc set, for the opposite reason, it's like fast ballet, weird grace & precision, like your vision catching on individual snowflakes as they fall, absolutely worth finding (and paying what you might have to, it's out of print)

the easiest one to find is still the Ciccolini 2 disc 'Piano Works' on EMI, with the silly painting of Satie's smiling eyes on the cover, as Scott noted upthread

I actually don't like what I've heard of the Boran Gorisek performances at all, pompous, humorless, stomping ego all over the place, missing the point entirely. Though he does do a pretty great 25 minute version of Vexations, and I haven't heard the new 2 CD LTM reissue that Ned is giving the thumbs up to.

xp

small bit in Janet Jackson's "Someone to Call My Lover"

also, a *excellent* interpretation by Pine*am (it's on their myspace songs thing http://www.myspace.com/pineam).

Francis Poulenc plays the music of Satie and Poulenc -- recorded in 1950, one of the earliest available recordings, though I think this was a disc you had to look for, not as well distributed as the later Ciccolini's on Angel. 42 minutes, great fidelity, Poulenc understands. Side 1 is Satie, side 2 is Poulenc & both are great.

Camarata did three moog + orchestra Satie records, velvet gentleman, through the looking glass and the electronic spirit of erik satie. the last one is the best, the cartoon moog solos playing the lead melodies, mixed just as loud as the entire orchestra, the sound makes you blink. Strange spoken word interjections, a Satie impersonator introducing the pieces, it's a great record

(& in my last post, I meant Jack not Scott, comedy)

closing tag

i was used to it too except when i got the deleeuw version i realized that the faster pace was a mistake and here was how his pieces should've been played all along.

here's the lp w/ the Furniture Music

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g80/beermanleshock/DSCN4982.jpg

and, i just found mp3s here:
http://www.ubu.com/sound/satie_conceptual.html

that's the pascal roge

http://cover6.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/010/13821.jpg

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(messed my login up) thx nerve pylon, been wanting to hear this stuff for years and have never been able them on any cd/record. "ahead of their time" is an understatement.

i forgot to add, that version of "cinema" is far better than other recordings i've heard. it's a funny piece. kinda philip glass-y (only not annoying)

I really do seem to be accumulating a Satie collection almost without trying -- LTM's just sent their newest, Avant-dernières pensées, which is subtitled 'Selected Piano Works Vol. 1,' so presumably there's more on the way. Tracklisting:

Trois Gymnopédies
Gnossiennes 1-7
Je te veux
Caresse
Musiques intimes et secretes
Embryons desséchés
Le Piège de Méduse
Descriptions automatiques
Sports et divertissements
Avant-dernières pensées

I was also able to snag a compilation of the Ciccolini recordings on Angel via the Tower implosion last year, so that's been handy for a bit of contrast.

I would recommend his published journals, A Mammal's Notebook

i have the Yitkin Seow recordings on Hyperion. Really, really good.

how is that LTM disc, Ned? I'm a little afraid of the performer Goran Borisek, but have only heard other disc disc of his.

electronic spirit of erik satie by camarata, utter classic, full chamber orchestra with the leads played by loud moog. if you like perrey & kingsley and you like satie, you already love this record

correction Bojan Gorisek

gettin my balkans confused

Bojan Gorisek recorded the complete piano works of Satie for a label called Audiophile Classics that were released as a 10-CD box set and as individual volumes (I have two of the individual CDs). I suppose the LTM releases are reissues of some of those recordings. The ones I have are not bad - it's nice to hear some of the less familiar Satie pieces, including ones for voice and piano that are more in a cabaret-influenced style.

'Apply yourself to renunciation'
'Behave yourself, please: a monkey is watching you'
'Coldly'
'Do not speak'
'Even duller if you can
'

'From a distance, bored'

satie-inspired desserts: http://www.scena.org/lsm/sm7-10/Desserts-en.html

http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/daily_routines/2009/01/erik-satie.html

On most mornings after he moved to Arcueil, Satie would return to Paris on foot, a distance of about ten kilometres, stopping frequently at his favourite cafés on route. Accoring to Templier, "he walked slowly, taking small steps, his umbrella held tight under his arm. When talking he would stop, bend one knee a little, adjust his pince-nez and place his fist on his lap. The he would take off once more with small deliberate steps."

When he eventually reached Paris he visited friends, or arranged to meet them in other cafés by sending pneumatiques. Often the walking from place to place continued, focussing on Montmarte before the war, and subsequently on Montparnasse. From here, Satie would catch the last train back to Arcueil at about 1.00am, or, if he was still engaged in serious drinking, he would miss the train and begin the long walk home during the early hours of the morning. Then the daily round would begin again.

Roger Shattuck, in conversations with John Cage in 1982, put forward the interesting theory that "the source of Satie's sense of musical beat--the possibility of variation within repetition, the effect of boredom on the organism--may be this endless walking back and forth across the same landscape day after day . . . the total observation of a very limited and narrow environment." During his walks, Satie was also observed stopping to jot down ideas by the light of the street lamps he passed.

can someone recommend a good Satie recording? could be gymnopedies, but I'm very open

Funny, I've been trying to work out which recording (presumably of gymnopedies) is sampled on black to comm's 'hotel freund' and i can't find it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7btR8DGees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMQFKA2bdqs

My high school friends and I found xpost Aldo Ciccolini's early solo piano LPs an excellent gateway, prob an influence on discreet Eno (but not New Age):
i got the full 'complete piano works' thing (5 cds) with ciccolini and, i must say, i find it kind of exhausting
those are later (1983-1986) re-recordings by ciccolini. the 2 CD piano works set compiles the original 1966-1971 recordings which introduced Satie to the record-buying public, I prefer the performances and the sequencing is more listenable.

― (Jon L),

Jon L's post is upthread, in '04.

I don't share all the Ciccolini love here (surely I can't be the only one?) regarding Satie, and I generally haven't warmed to his Debussy interpretations also. I just can't connect with a lot of his tempo (a tad bit fast) and phrasing choices. Regarding tempo, on the other hand, de Leeuw feels way too slow, to me almost comically so, like someone ran it through Paul's Sound Stretch.

I've been enjoying what I've heard so far from Thibaudet. And actually, Thibaudet was a student of Ciccolini's. His solo Satie recordings are available in a complete set from Decca.

Apparently, Thibaudet never played Satie for Ciccolini, and Ciccolini told him to not listen to his own famous recordings.

From this page: https://www.yourclassical.org/story/2016/07/20/new-classical-tracks-thibaudet-takes-on-satie

Thibaudet's teacher and mentor, Aldo Ciccolini was one of the first pianists to revive the music of Erik Satie. "And people said, of course, you were his student, you must have discovered and learned Satie with him," Jean-Yves says. "Well, to tell the truth, I didn't play one note of Satie to Aldo. And when I started this project, I called him and I said, 'I'd like to discuss and play some Satie for you.' And he said, 'You know, this is music you have to do on your own. I don't have anything to tell you there. You have to find your own world. I don't even encourage you to listen to my recordings because you should really find your own ideas about this music.'

I have the Ciccolini 2CD and enjoy it, though I’m hardly an expert (I have also heard the opinion that the tempos are too fast).

(that’s “also” as in – elsewhere besides the informative post above)

thibaudet sounds like what I need

I bought a book of his piano music scores for someone this Christmas, one of my best ever presents I reckon.

Jokey/proto-dadaist Satie leaves me utterly cold so Pascal Rogé's After the Rain is all I need.

I found the tempos on After the Rain sped up and slowed down too much. I understand that Satie isn't best played to a metronomic speed, but I was getting carsick from Roge's renditions.

Fair enough. Maybe it's one of those 'Satie for people who don't really like Satie' albums, which suits me just fine.

Two other Satie pianists I like a whole lot:

Anne Queffelec
William Masselos (his Satie LP was an early entry in the discography)

after listening almost exclusively to horror soundtracks for 6 or 7 weeks i pulled up Satie's piano works on youtube before bed last weekend as a palate cleanser. these pieces aren't new to me but i've become obsessed with them in a way i haven't been with any other music in a long time. it's singular and internet boards are littered with threads by people looking for something else to sratch the same itch; other than some blatant copycats it doesn't exist because nothing else has that same free-floating feel to it. i think Saloli nailed it:

I ended up playing most of the Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes (his most popular works) throughout my tenure as a Eurythmy accompanist, and I began to notice that although it seems like the music is predictable and repetitive, none of the phrases resolved when I expected them to, and many of them began before the previous phrase was even over.

For example, at the beginning of Gnossiene No. 3, Satie sets up an expectation by playing the A minor chord twice and the E minor chord twice. A normal composer would do this again the exact same way, but Satie decides to replace the last E minor chord with the D minor chord (surprise!), which acts as the beginning of the next phrase. The effect is almost like an Escher staircase; you take the stairs up to the top, but you arrive on the side.

I came away from the experience thinking that Satie really is a clever, witty composer, and not at all boring. In fact, the musical result of this compositional style is extremely pleasant and meditative, a ticklish elixir that suspends time and expectations so that the listener achieves catharsis while being liberated from persistent and predictable cadences.

https://www.self-titledmag.com/saloli-reflects-on-the-revelatory-furniture-music-of-erik-satie/

i grabbed a bunch of 2cd Piano Works sets off soulseek, including Ciccolini and Roge (whose 2CD Debussy on Decca I like a lot), but ended up preferring the one I found on Youtube, Hakon Austbo, over all of them.

Anne queffelec is my favorite Satie pianist if you’re lookin. She did 2 discs worth which are now in a big box set of her complete recordings

Can you guys be specific about which Debussey & Satie CDs you're recommending? Catalogue number and title? I find it really hard to find classical discs with just a vague description.

My favorite collection of Debussy orchestral work remains this one, mostly conducted by Bernard Haitink in the '70s. For piano music I'm most familiar with Walter Gieseking, whose recordings are from the mono era but have a lovely ambiance; they've been reissued/remastered/repackaged many times (here's a recent one). These recordings were Penguin Guide favorites in the late '90s editions I used to have.

For Satie, I like Thibaudet: https://www.discogs.com/release/9524909-Erik-Satie-Jean-Yves-Thibaudet-The-Complete-Solo-Piano-Music
For Debussy's "Suite Bergamasque," I like Seong-Jin Cho: https://www.discogs.com/master/1373955-Debussy-Seong-Jin-Cho-Images-Childrens-Corner-Suite-Bergamasque-Lisle-Joyeuse

I haven't heard Roge's Debussy or Queffelec's Satie - thanks for the recommendations!

https://www.discogs.com/master/399109-Erik-Satie-Anne-Queffélec-Erik-Satie

https://www.discogs.com/master/1513970-Erik-Satie-Anne-Queffélec-Catherine-Collard-Oeuvres-Pour-Piano-Piano-Works

Debussy is my favorite composer and it’s better not to get me started.

Those links didn’t come out right…

Piano Music of Erik Satie Vol. 1 was the LP my high school friends and I listened to: these are some of the 60s Ciccolini tracks that Jon L. xpost prefers to his 80s re-dos, so maybe we hit it lucky. Way before Discreet Music and so on, they just seemed like tiny landscapes, always eventful and atmospheric, sometimes concisely challenging. That copy was in mono; the stereo didn't have quite the same effect (heard much later, though).

https://ecm-server.de/audio/00289481/0028948117963/Cover_1000.webp

not all Satie, but this one is just so perfect

For a second I was wondering about Kim Kardashian's connection to Satie...

!

Gotta shout out Reinbert DeLeeuw, whose recordings of Satie's piano music are notoriously slow; his first Gymnopedie alone clocks in at 6 minutes. Music for deep meditation.

This is the compilation to hear: https://www.discogs.com/master/523528-Erik-Satie-The-Early-Piano-Works

Kim kashkashian rules

Wow that Rothko Chapel album looks amazing. Thanks, calzino!

honestly, it really is amazing and has never ceased to amaze me any less after years of listening to it.

or something like that!

One of two feldmans I’ve been lucky enough to see performed (the other - patterns in a chromatic field)

appreciate these wonderful recommendations

The surprise highlight of that Rothko Chapel CD is the Cage piano piece, almost monochrome yet completely gripping, a lot less dense than the famous Satie pieces.

I think the contrasts between t'other 2 composers and Satie is something that works really good on that recording

http://www.yoshioojima.com/works/music/1258/

https://wereleasewhateverthefuckwewantrecords.bandcamp.com/album/wave-notation-3-erik-satie-1984

xpost to the St. Giga thread possibly, there's more

i know those Morton Feldman Rothko Chapel pieces (they rule) but not this comp.