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Erik Satie (1866-1925) was without doubt one of great ‘one offs’in musical history. Impossible to categorise, he composed around 100 works, which include film scores, ballets, melodies and above all piano works. A friend of Debussy, Ravel, Cocteau, Picasso and Diaghalev, he was at the core of the avant garde in Paris, and yet he remained an outsider – deliberately so.

Happy playing piano in jazz bars – where he and Debussy met each other, Satie was the antithesis of the late 19th century and early 20th musical world as dominated by Wagner and his adherents. The master of Bayreuth had proclaimed himself the prophet of ‘music of the future’and his vast opulently scored music dramas cast their spell over the Second Viennese school, and also Debussy, whose opera Pelléas et Melisande has a good deal of Parsifal and Tristan in its score. With Satie, it was the music of the past that was important, and he even returned to the tones of the ancient Greeks. Gymnopédies evokes the dance of children from ancient Sparta, who danced in honour of Apollo. Similarly, Gnossiennes is from the labyrinth at Knossos (Gnossos). It wasn’t all ancient Greek influences though that guided Satie’s inspiration – jazz and the music hall were potent influences Perhaps the most idiosyncratic work he composed is Vexations. He composed it in 1893, but refused to show the score to anyone, and the premiere took place in 1963 at the instigation of John Cage. The score occupies a single page, headed ‘Page Mystique. To play this motif 840 times in succession, it will be necessary to prepare oneself in advance, in total silence, by remaining absolutely motionless.’ A complete performance thus takes 18–30 hours. Cristina Ariagno plays an excerpt.

Alfred Erik Leslie Satie (1866–1925) was born in Honfleur, of a Normand father and a Scottish mother. He rates as one of music’s true originals – a real ‘one-off ’. After his studies as an organist, and then a period as a rather unsuccessful concert pianist having studied with several eminent teachers (he hated the rules of academic life), he enrolled in the French Army. This didn’t solve his problems with life either, so he deliberately contracted bronchitis and was invalided out after being declared unfit for service. It was after this sad episode that he started to compose, and his earliest published work was Valse-Ballet. Satie then entered the life of Parisian nightclubs, absorbing all the influences of sound and life on offer, becoming friends with Debussy – they met when Satie had got a job as second pianist at a club. Satie had developed a unique way of composing – a kind of musical freehand – and was introducing complex chord structures that would come to influence Debussy. His music attracted the attention of such leading figures as Diaghilev, Picasso, Ravel, Stravinsky and Cocteau. Even so, Satie had a feeling that he wasn’t being taken seriously as a composer, and embarked on a three-year counterpoint study with Albert Roussel. The piano four-hands form has a long and distinguished history with many major symphonic works by Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky published in this form for a wide domestic market. For many years the great classical composers’ works had appeared in this form, including works by Mozart and Schubert, who wrote specifically for piano four-hands.

In the days before LPs, CDs and MP3s this was how music was heard in the home. This CD contains some of Satie’s most important works – Parade, written for Cocteau, Relâche, Gymnopédies Nos. 1 and 3, and his so-called ‘Furniture music’, Musique d’ameublement of 1917.

Piano Duo Sandra & Jeroen were established in 1987, and since then have toured extensively.

They have also made over 40 CDs. They teach, adjudicate, and have a passion for bringing music to unusual locations such as railway stations!

The unconventional French composer Erik Satie almost wrote anti-music. In slow motion (and without bars) his well-known Gymnopédies glide past. In other pieces one can hear more than faint echoes form the vaudeville theatre. Played by Håkon Austbø.

Recording: June 2009, Fazioli Hall, Sacile, Italy

John Cage (1912–92) is regarded as one of the most influential and controversial composers of the 20th century. It is not only his music that this reputation is based on – his ideas were revolutionary, and he cast doubt on the supremacy of European art, and music when it was unchallenged and such views were considered heretic. Cage rejected the status held by harmony, instrumentation, and even the development of music from one point to another. He disconnected harmony from rhythm to liberate western music from its hitherto privileged hierarchies – iconoclastic stuff for 1940s America!

Cage studied with Schoenberg in Los Angeles, and although he adopted the 12-tone technique he abandoned Schoenberg’s expressionist style. Cage was also influenced the maverick composer – Erik Satie.

Satie had also ridiculed the musical establishment, and Cage arranged Satie’s longest work Socrate (a monodrama for piano and voice) for two pianos. It is worth mentioning that Cage’s favourite Satie composition was Vexations, a short work for piano, with instructions that it may be performed 840 times without pause or change.

Recording made in 2009.

Important repertoire and an ideal introduction to John Cage.

This unusual collection is dedicated to a very popular style: minimalist music. The style has evolved from austere, almost strict repetition to a more varied and free approach to material and technique.

The set includes works for solo piano by most of the famous ‘minimalist’ composers covering three generations from Cage, through Riley and Glass to Adams and Nyman.

Piano sonatas (by Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Schumann) are featured extensively but this set also contains some rather original choices: music by Satie, Albéniz and Liszt for example.