Jean-Yves Thibaudet has undertaken the complete solo piano works of another late nineteenth/early twentieth century French composer: Erik Satie. This even includes a sample of Vexations, that theme and two variations that Satie instructs to be played slowly, 840 times. It's interesting to compare Thibaudet's interpretations of these works with those of Aldo Ciccolini, who was one of Thibaudet's teachers. Overall, Thibaudet gives a less-Romantic interpretation, with less overt emotion and more introverted abstraction, but it is not overly academic.
The protean and prolific Jeroen van Veen turns his attention to Erik Satie’s complete piano works for a 9-CD boxed set that ties in with the composer’s 150th birthday year. In a way, the collection is completer than complete. It includes all of Satie’s published and unpublished works for solo piano and piano duo, piano arrangements of theater scores as Le fils des étoiles, Darius Milhaud’s transcription of Cinéma.
A collection of unrivalled completeness, Tout Satie proves that the music of Erik Satie (1866-1925) remains as provocative, delightful – and surprising – as ever. These 10 CDs, featuring artists with impeccable credentials in French repertoire, draw together his works for piano, orchestra, chamber ensemble and voice. They constantly remind us that Satie was not just a maverick or an eccentric: he was a true original.