Letter(s) to Erik Satie
Bertrand Chamayou, piano
French pianist Bertrand Chamayou’s latest album features works by two musical mavericks, Erik Satie and John Cage.
“Erik Satie and John Cage are UFOs in the world of music, because they envisioned music through a completely different prism,” says Chamayou. “They are pioneers in the sense that, for many people, they changed the very idea of what music must be.” With this album ‘Letter(s) to Erik Satie’ – named after a 1978 work by John Cage, conceived for voice and tape loops – Chamayou pays tribute to these two idiosyncratic, innovative and influential composers, one born in Normandy in 1866, the other in Los Angeles in 1912.
Satie is best known for his otherworldly Gymnopédies and the hypnotic Gnossiennes; Cage for his works for prepared piano and the infamous 4’33”. Both composers challenged tradition and received wisdom in composition, and their influence and legacy is very present today. Cage admired Satie, to the extent that he put on a festival devoted to Satie’s music and was responsible for the first performance of Vexations, where a short piano piece has to be repeated 840 times, over the course of 18 hours.
There is nothing vexatious about this collection: it is dreamy and haunting, intimate and intriguing. The album opens with a rarity, John Cage’s All Sides of the small Stone, for Erik Satie, which was rediscovered in 2015 among the papers of the late composer and Cage pupil James Tenney (whose piece Three Pages in the Shape of Pear is included on this album). It’s a very Satie-esque work, recalling the serenity and harmonic simplicity of the Gymnopédies, with a bass line pattern that is a direct nod to Gymnopédie No. 1. It provides the perfect opener, setting the tone of the entire album in which short works gently segue into one another. And while none of the other works by Cage on this album come quite as close to Satie’s soundworld, pieces like In a Landscape and Dream share Satie’s contemplative, introspective character, his beguiling harmonic language and hypnotic metres.
The challenge of these deceptively simple miniatures and enigmatic musical aphorisms lies in creating balance and weight, contrast and continuity, with a clear sense of the melodic line and pulse. Chamayou, a master of the intimate, achieves this brilliantly, bringing poise and poetry to music that is both very well-known (the Gymnopédies) and that which is not. He avoids cliché in his performance of the most well-known of Satie’s works and is not afraid to bring a more robust clarity of tone to the Gnossiennes, highlighting the idiosyncrasies and nuances of this fascinating music. We find a similar sparkling clarity in Cage’s In A Landscape, where bell-like motifs in the upper register chime like gamelans over an ethereal soundscape which takes the listener to another place and time.
There is one of Cage’s works for prepared piano too, in which the instrument is given a curious, otherworldly sound – something which I am sure would have intrigued and amused Satie.
The juxtapositions between the Cage pieces and those by Satie creates an organic, intriguing homage from one composer to another, sensitively and imaginatively curated by Chamayou. The album works beautifully as both a recital disc but also as a continuous loop of music where new and different aspects of the music are revealed on repeated listenings.
Letter(s) to Erik Satie is released by Erato and is available on CD, vinyl and streaming
ENTRANCED
The Orchestra of the Swan
Signum Classics SIGCD853
Musical adventurers, Orchestra of the Swan (OOTS), led by the charismatic violinist David Le Page, complete a remarkable musical journey with their latest release, Entranced. It’s an extraordinary odyssey which has seen them topping the US Billboard and iTop charts, and launching millions of streams from new audiences. Their innovative, imaginative approach cleverly combines “traditional” classical music with rock, pop, jazz, techno, ambient and folk to produce eclectic programmes and performances which blur the lines between genres. This enlightened approach to repertoire, combined with the Swan’s concerts in non-standard venues and experiments in digital sound, appeals to listeners with less exposure to classical music.
Over the past few years, OOTS have released a series of “mixtape” albums, which continue the spirit of the mixtapes and compilations on cassette tape of the 1980s (something which those of us of a certain age will remember creating for friends and boyfriends/girlfriends). These inventive, carefully curated and beautifully executed albums present a diverse compilation of arrangements (many of which are by David Le Page) and reinterpretations of works by an eclectic mix of composers.
Entranced is a compilation of these compilations, as it were, incorporating 15 tracks from OOTS’ critically acclaimed trio of mixtape albums, Timelapse, Labyrinths and Echoes, with all tracks now produced in Dolby Atmos – the immersive, surround-sound technology developed by cinema, that places the audience at the heart of the sound.
Artistic Director of OOTS, David Le Page says, “Entranced weaves together the genius of David Bowie, Schubert, Delius, Philip Glass, and Piazzolla. There is a brand new arrangement of Finzi’s extraordinary The Salutation for solo violin and strings, and transcendent beauty, from Brian Eno’s gorgeous An Ending (Ascent), to Peter Maxwell Davies’ Farewell to Stromness.”
Listening in not-quite-darkness, with only the dim light from my bedside clock radio, I hear An Ending (Ascent) by that master of ambient, Brian Eno. Of course I recognise it, but not quite in this arrangement. The sounds wash gently over me and in the dark and still of the night, it’s intimate and meditative, almost a lullaby. Listening again, in daytime, in the surround sound of my kitchen HiFi, the music floats, weightless but for a simple sequence picked out on the harp, now growing in intensity with a soaring violin line over lusher instrumental textures….
This track embodies the spirit of Entranced. The music on this album is serene and introspective, mesmerising and immersive – from the opening track, an arrangement of David’s Bowie’s song Heroes to the gracefulness of Rameau’s Les Boréades, the haunting sensuality of Piazzolla’s Oblivion, and the hypnotic, minimalist loops of Philip Glass, Entranced presents a sequence of beautifully atmospheric musical landscapes, infused with light, which transport the listener to the far reaches of their imagination.
Entranced is released on 20 October by Signum Classics, on disc and via streaming
Duncan Honeybourne plays the 1873 Bevington organ at Holy Trinity parish church, Bincombe, Dorset (Prima Facie records PFCD220)
Songs for Our Times
The Cross-Eyed Pianist 