Erik Satie
Erik Satie's piano music moves in slow, spare circles. The Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes rest on simple modal melodies and unresolved chords, cool, unhurried and strangely weightless.
Most of his output is brief and written for solo piano, though the same lean line and dry humour run through songs, ballets and the cool classical plainness of Socrate. He favoured titles that refuse solemnity: true flabby preludes for a dog, a bureaucratic sonatina, three pear-shaped pieces. Sports et divertissements sketches pastimes in tiny, precisely etched gestures, sometimes with spoken text. Cabaret waltzes such as Je te veux sit beside the stillness of the Gnossiennes without apology. Bar-lines can vanish; harmony is often left open. The music wants clarity, wit and a light hand rather than display, which is why players keep returning to it when they need something that feels both ancient and oddly modern.
Erik Satie is featured on the following titles
The Impressionists
In his debut CD for Move Records, Stephen McIntyre offers a programme of impressionist piano favourites by Debussy, Ravel and Satie, including Images, Children's Corner, Gaspard de la Nuit and the Gnossiennes.
Compositions by Erik Satie also appear on
Crossing Paths
Ensemble Liaison and the Tony Gould Trio take turns across the programme: each piece is heard first in a scored reading, then in an improvised jazz response that opens the same melodic and harmonic material to fresh colour.
The Glass Soldier
Music from Hannie Rayson’s play The Glass Soldier. Based on a true story, it is a sincere tribute to Australians who fought in the Great War: people who had little, yet gave everything.
A Classic Case of Love
Soprano Helen Noonan and guitarist Peter Constant present an intimate programme of love songs spanning centuries, from folk and early music to Schubert, Satie, Villa-Lobos and the twentieth-century stage and songbook.
Night Thoughts
During the long still nights of Melbourne’s Covid lockdowns, pianist Len Vorster listened widely and thought hard about what he heard. Those evening ruminations became this programme of fifteen nocturnes and night pieces, from Schumann’s circle to Copland.
Ringing the Strings
Melbourne’s Concordia Mandolin and Guitar Orchestra present a programme of original works and arrangements for plucked strings, including music by Sculthorpe and Fauré alongside pieces by the ensemble’s own Michelle Nelson.