Comme l’ont dit nombre de musicologues, la musique de Satie se caractérise par un ésotérisme subtil teinté d’une pointe d’humour et de mysticisme. C’est une musique par ailleurs absolument novatrice et audacieuse, sans emphase, à la sensibilité discrète, naïve et raffinée. Une musique étrange et sans effets de virtuosité, venue d’ailleurs et suspendue au temps comme dans le Gymnopédies et les Gnossiennes. Satie, suivant son humilité naturelle, possède l’art de simplifier le trait mélodique. L’interprétation de J.N.Barbier est en tout point remarquable et fait de ce CD un petit joyau.
Violin virtuoso and composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst was well known to audiences and musicians in the middle of the 19th century. At first he was a slavish follower of Paganini, whom he followed from place to place; often, by listening to the Italian master, he was able to reproduce his new works before they had been published or disseminated. But there is a kind of elegant artistry in some of his music that displays his own personality, and Joseph Joachim, the violinist most closely associated with the Beethoven/Brahms line of musical thinking, called Ernst the greatest violinist he had ever heard.
The perfect case of a pianist who sounds completely relaxed in the studio and, because of that, manages to balance assertiveness and poetry in ideal proportions. Gerhard Oppitz is a penetrating Brahmsian, bracing in the youthful works, quietly confiding in the later ones.
Traveling to Poland in 1829, Chopin gave his first concert in public just a short time before completing his Concerto in F Minor. He presented this concerto in concert for the first time on February 7, 1830 in front of a small group of special guests: "Experts greatly appreciate this new piece comprised of so many new ideas; it is perhaps counted among the most beautiful of recent works. ” The Concerto in F Minor was not published until 1836, thus becoming known as the “second concerto” compared with the “first” Concerto in E Minor, which he wrote and edited in 1833. October 11, 1830, before leaving for Vienna, Chopin gave a farewell concert at the National Theater in Varsovie during which he performed Concerto in E Minor and The Polish Fantasy.
Les Explorateurs is a chamber ensemble based around pianist Joanna Ławrynowicz, with guest musicians coming in according to the requirements of works at hand. Ławrynowicz has recorded over thirty CDs for Acte Préalable (AP) spanning more than a decade, and was apparently the first Pole to record the complete works of Chopin - also for AP. For these two new releases she and cellist Łukasz Tudzierz combine in genial, committed performances to reveal to the world another batch of forgotten gems from seriously neglected composers. The Dobrzyński disc in particular is outstanding in every respect - perhaps AP's finest to date.
It's simple: in his various realizations of the piano music of Erik Satie, Aldo Ciccolini set a standard that has yet to be bettered. This compilation, drawn from recordings made between 1966 and 1971, is consequently the best of the best. Ciccolini always played Satie's music as though it had been written by Claude Debussy, not by some cheap charlatan or uneducated primitive (which, to an extent that is still debatable, Satie was). The result is that these seemingly simple piano pieces acquire a tonal allure that is as surprising as it is undeniable. They possess an understated sophistication that points directly toward Ravel and Poulenc, at the same time providing an opening to the minimalist aesthetic of the later 20th century. Ciccolini's playing is pliant and graceful, and under his fingers the music seems to breathe and come alive. What more could a composer or a listener want? –Ted Libbey