Satie: Gnossienne No. 1

Claire Chevallier plays the music of Erik Satie on a period Erard Piano

Chevallier has gained many plaudits for her recordings with Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna, including the BBC Music Magazine Award nominated recording of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for Left Hand.

A genuinely new approach to these popular works.

Claire Chevallier writes in the sleevenote:

Jean Cocteau said of Satie (whom he saw every morning for a long period of his life): ‘He inherited a grave eccentricity from his Scottish ancestry. . . . Egotistical, cruel, obsessive, he would listen to nothing that did not conform to his dogma and would fly into furious rages with anything that disturbed it. Egotistical, because he thought only of his music. Cruel, because he defended his music. Obsessive, because he polished his music. And his music was tender. And so he was, too, in his own way. . . . He cleaned himself with pumice stone. He never used water. At a time when music surged forth in floods, recognising Debussy’s genius but fearful of his despotism (they remained on friendly but quarrelsome terms right up to the end), he turned his back on the latter’s school and became, at the Schola Cantorum, the odd sort of Socrates we knew. ‘There he pumiced, defied, smoothed himself, and forged the little orifice through which his exquisite force needed only to flow from its source.’

When I chanced on this passage from Cocteau shortly after the recording, I felt this text summed up my impressions of those few days in front of the microphones when I had played Satie on my 1905 Érard. This superb piano regulated to cope with high volume and works that ‘surge forth in floods’ (such as Ravel’s Concerto for the left hand, ZZT060901) offered me the rich sonority of a cathedral on legs (especially for Les Sonneries de la Rose+Croix and the Ogives), but thereby showed me what Satie had resisted: it showed me in practice the paradox I required for his music. This paradox nourished each note of an inner universe equivalent to Satie’s egotistical, cruel, obsessive struggle to reach a goal of which he remains the sole master universe were opening up before me. In fact, all this music requires a total reduction of resources, a knifeedge playing style, a refusal of effect, and the most touching thing is that this leads us to Cocteau’s extraordinary conclusion: Satie’s music is tender. But it is a tenderness of an almost indecipherable purity . . .‘Precious’, as Satie would have said . . . Claire Chevallier - 10 May 2008

Produced by EMI Classics in partnership with the prestigious National Gallery in London, The National Gallery Collection is a budget-price catalogue series bringing together the very best in fine art and classical music.

The collection features a selection of classical masterworks in celebrated recordings from the EMI Classics catalogue, brought together with great artworks from The National Gallery’s permanent collection.

TRAVELING SONATA: An adventurous program of European masterworks for flute and guitar, from scintillating young artists VIVIANA GUZMÁN and JÉRÉMY JOUVE. Their outstanding performances have been captured brilliantly by Grammy®-winning recording engineer Keith O. Johnson. A winner for all audiophiles and music lovers!

This album is a musical journey full of emotion, from the soothing and mellow music of Faure and Satie to the driving excitement of ”Bolero” and “Carmen,” to the thrilling modern music of Dyens, Duplessy and Ourkouzounov.

Supporting the release of the Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon (4790058)

Reissue

This stunning collection showcases the greatest stars of classical music with dazzling performances from Gustavo Dudamel, Cecilia Bartoli, Lang Lang and Anna Netrebko, to name but a few...

Also includes legendary performances from some of the greatest artists of all time, including Luciano Pavarotti, Sir Georg Solti, Plácido Domingo and Daniel Barenboim.

Introducing the exciting talents of a number of rising stars such as Jonas Kaufmann, Danielle De Niese, Julia Fischer and Alice Sara Ott

With 40 tracks and over 2½ hours of music this collection is outstanding value for money, providing the foundation for a library of classical music.

The winner of numerous international awards as a producer of both pop and classical recordings, Craig Leon also leads a career as a composer. His album for Joshua Bell of transcriptions for violin and orchestra was unanimously acclaimed everywhere, which prompted him quite naturally to turn to the cello after meeting Ophélie Gaillard when she was giving a concert at the Wigmore Hall. He has created new arrangements for her, reviving the long standing tradition of cellists, from Gregor Piatigorsky to Pablo Casals who played popular transcriptions of great works on their instruments. Ophélie is accompanied by the RPO, recorded at Abbey Road studios and supported by CIC who loaned her magnificent Gofriller cello.

“the rich tones of Ophélie Gaillard’s 1737 Gofriller cello complement her warm lyrical style and add colour to a keen awareness of instrumental vocalisation.” The Strad, June 2010