By |

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

John Cage preparing a piano
Bertrand Chamayou
Erik Satie

By |

Guest review by Anthony Hardwicke

The early afternoon concert was all about the stylish French pianist, Bertrand Chamayou. He started off by metaphorically holding the audience’s hand as he guided us through Ligeti’s early masterpiece Musica Ricercata. Chamayou’s versatile technique was deployed to lovingly characterise each of the 11 short movements, ending in a dazzling 12-tone fugue with immaculate legato fingerwork. Chamayou was every bit the pianist as a servant to the music.

Leif Ove Andsnes then joined Chamayou for some sumptuous, sensitive, carefully thought-through Schubert for four hands. The Allegro in A minor D.947 is one of the lesser known of the numerous masterpieces that Schubert wrote in the last year of his life, 1828. It’s of ‘heavenly length’, and Andsnes (playing secondo) affectionately controlled the huge sonata form structure while Chamayou’s light, ethereal running quavers moved the music forward. It is not often we get the chance to hear piano duet playing in concerts, let alone of such amazing quality and it was lovely to see the obvious mutual respect that Andsnes and Chamayou had for each other.
The concert ended with the Israeli-German clarinetist Sharon Kam and Julia Hagen (cello) joining Chamayou for Brahms’ Op.114 Clarinet Trio. I’m sure Kam has lived and breathed this piece her whole life. She had her eyes closed and there was so much bodily movement, it was almost like she was dancing the piece, using her clarinet almost as a conductor’s baton! The result of all this bodily movement was to give shape to each one of Brahms’ long phrases. Hagen and Chamayou sensibly made space for Kam’s soft, lush low register. Kam led the intensely private second movement with her sultry, smoky sound. All in all, a very satisfying performance which made an elusive piece of late Brahms easy to appreciate.
 
How many pianists could play three such huge and diverse pieces, consecutively and perfectly: a challenging Ligeti solo masterpiece, the primo part of a neglected Schubert piano duet and then a full-scale four-movement Brahms chamber work? Chamayou is the complete package.

Bertrand Chamayou & Leif Ove Andsnes
Sharon Kam
Julia Hagen
Photo credit: Liv Øvland

By |

Piano Day was founded in 2015 by composer and pianist Nils Frahm, and a group of like-minded others, and it celebrates all things piano – the instrument and those who play it, its extensive repertoire, and other piano-related projects. It takes places each year on 29th March, the 88th day of the year, chosen because the piano has 88 keys.

“Why does the world need a Piano Day? For many reasons. But mostly, because it doesn’t hurt to celebrate the piano and everything around it: performers, composers, piano builders, tuners, movers and most important, the listener.” – Nils Frahm

In a year when pianos in concert halls have largely fallen silent, Piano Day seems even more significant to me. I have to admit a certain estrangement from my own piano – I have not felt much motivation to play over the past year, despite having more time to devote to an instrument which I love, but in spite of this, I have made some new musical discoveries which I would like to share here.

Woven Silver from Seven Traceries – William Grant Still

A chance hearing of this piece on BBC Radio 3 one morning led me to listen to the entire suite and order the sheet music direct from William Grant Still’s estate in the US.

Chaconne – Jean-Henri d’Anglebert

Another piece which I discovered via BBC Radio 3, listening late one evening to the Night Tracks programme which is broadcast after 11pm

Every Morning, Birds from The Book of Leaves – Rachel Grimes

I discovered Rachel Grimes’ piano music when I was invited to suggest music for the new London College of Music piano syllabus. This atmospheric miniature is from her Book of Leaves album.

Blue Air from Colour Suite – Madeleine Dring

In 2020 I was asked to contribute teaching and performance notes for Trinity College of London’s new piano syllabus, and this was one the pieces for which I wrote notes. I like its lazy swinging rhythms and piquant, jazz harmonies.

Quiet Rhythms: Prologue & Action No. 9 – William Susman

This piece appeared in one of those “if you liked that, you’ll like this” playlists which the Spotify algorithm creates based on one’s listening.

Some Other Time – by Leonard Bernstein, played by Bill Evans

This is very similar to Evans’ Peace Piece, which I play quite frequently, and it shares its tranquillity and ostinato bass.

Allegro Moderato from Gargoyles – Lowell Liebermann

Another chance discovery, the sheet music for this piece by American composer and pianist Lowell Liebermann was included in an issue of International Piano magazine. It’s been on my piano for awhile, but I haven’t yet got round to learning it properly, beyond a brief sight-read. (Read my review of Lowell Lierbermann’s Personal Demons here)

Film en miniature, H. 148: III. Berceuse – Martinu

Track 14 https://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/catalogue/item.asp?cid=190295242428

I don’t know very much of Martinu’s piano music and I discovered this piece through French pianist Bertrand Chamayou’s wonderful ‘Good Night!’ album (one of my favourite recordings of 2020 – review here).

Elf Dance – Moondog

American composer Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin, May 26, 1916 – September 8, 1999) was blind from the age of 16 and wrote most of his music in Braille. I like the Baroque/folksy flavours of this miniature, which appears on Vanessa Wagner’s disc Inland.

Listening back through these selections, I notice that most have a rather meditative or ambient quality, perhaps reflecting my taste for quieter, more reflective music during the past year.

By |

Good Night! – Bertrand Chamayou, piano (Erato/Warner Classics)

Don’t listen to this album if you’ve got work to do or a project to complete. This captivating, engrossing album of lullabies, or berceuses, will make you want to ease back in your chair, or retreat to somewhere more comfortable – perhaps a chaise longue, or even your bed. Turn the lights low and allow pianist Bertrand Chamayou’s exquisite, expressive soundworld to envelope you (the album is recorded in Dolby Atmos immersive sound which is at once intimate and vivid).

For Chamayou, a self-confessed night owl who resists the calls of Morpheus and relishes the tension between the awake and almost-but-not-quite asleep states, the lullaby’s “place is halfway between dream and reality”, a curious borderland of the most varied emotions, from tenderness to fear (fear of the dark, fear of nightmares), delight to anguish when night thoughts can overwhelm and give little chance of rest. The lullaby is also representative of the special bond between babies and children and their parents and carers, who provide comfort and reassurance.

The inspiration behind this album was in part due to Chamayou recently becoming a father himself, taking on the roles of “tucker-up and comforter”. The piano repertoire contains some of the most beautiful examples in the genre, from the rocking bass line and delicate filigree figurations of Chopin’s Berceuse to Brahms’s ever-popular Wiegenlied (Cradle Song). But Chamayou also reveals some lesser-known lullabies by Lyapunov, Mel Bonis and Martinů. Nor is the night-time landscape always calm and restful: A probezinha (‘poor little waif’)from Villa-Lobos’ ‘Prole de bebê’ is tinged with melancholy; Busoni’s Berceuse is dark and hallucinatory, for which Chamayou creates an almost impressionistic wash of sound and colour, and Balakirev’s has a nightmarish funeral march at its centre; even Grieg’s Berceuse from Lyric Pieces Book 2, has an unsettling middle section; meanwhile, the spiky, tinkling notes of Lachenmann’s Wiegenmusik hint at the nighttime fears provoked by shadows dancing on the bedroom wall. But serenity is restored by Brahm’s famous lullaby which follows it. In Chamayou’s hands it is as warm and comforting as a mother’s embrace, enhanced by the Dolby Atmos sound which creates an enveloping resonance.

The album title comes from the first track ‘Good Night!’ from Janacek’s suite On An Overgrown Pat’, a piano miniature in which the briefest of ideas is obssessed over to produce music freighted with a poignant tenderness. Meanwhile, Bryce Dessner’s ‘Song For Octave’, written for his own son, has a hynoptic ostinato redolent of Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel and a haunting minimalist melody. Chamayou’s transparent sound here is utterly spellbinding (and it’s a piece I wanted to learn myself the moment I heard it).

At the risk of sounding a little trite, each work on this bewitching disc is lovingly played, Chamayou finding much beauty and elegance in simple lyrical melodies and gossamer figurations. His tempos are sensitive and supple, with an insouciant rubato which never feels contrived, and he convincingly portrays the individual character of each piece with clarity, wit and imagination.

We live in noisy, anxious times and this charming album offers much-needed respite and a balm to the soul

Recommended

This site is free to access and ad-free, and takes many hours to research, write, and maintain. If you find joy and value in what I do, please consider making a donation to support the continuance of this site

Make A Donation