Satie 6 Gnossiennes

The Gnossiennes are several piano compositions by the French composer Erik Satie in the late 19th century. The works are for the most part in free time (lacking time signatures or bar divisions) and highly experimental with form, rhythm and chordal structure. The form was invented by Satie but the term itself existed in French literature before Satie's usage.

Fazil Say brings a composer’s approach to these two strangely complementary French figures. He plays with a delicacy and restraint, almost as if a veil had been thrown over the piano: colors are subtle, rhetoric replaced by intimate whispers. He brings Debussy’s lovely Préludes vividly to life, his personality glinting off the notes, each miniature painted with tiny brushstrokes. Satie’s Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies, epigrammatic and wistful, are done with the perfect amount of reverence balanced with a cheeky smile. The piano is nicely recorded in an ambience that perfectly fits these infinitely rewarding small creations.

Pianist/composer Jacques Loussier demonstrated musical ability at an early age, starting to play at the age of ten and entering the Conservatoire National de Musique in Paris at 16. Loussier's main professor there was Yves Nat, who in turn was encouraged by Faure, Saint-Saens, and Debussy as a student himself. Loussier continued this distinguished tradition, graduating at the top of his class…

“Erik Satie and John Cage are UFOs in the world of music, because they envisioned music through a completely different prism,” says pianist Bertrand Chamayou. “They are pioneers in the sense that, for many people, they changed the very idea of what music must be.” With his album Letter(s) to Erik Satie Chamayou pays tribute to two idiosyncratic, innovative and influential composers, one born in Normandy in 1866, the other in Los Angeles in 1912. There is a strong connection between them: Cage considered Satie a source of inspiration. Satie takes pride of place on the album with such pieces as the three Gymnopédies and the seven Gnossiennes, while Cage is represented by five pieces and a work attributed to him following its rediscovery amongst the papers of his disciple James Tenney – whose musical homage to Satie also features in the programme. Chamayou recorded the album at the state-of-the-art Miraval Studios in Provence, which inspired him to take an experimental approach: “I thought we should do something a little different – and I thought of Erik Satie. This was an opportunity to get really intimate with the piano… Satie is really a special case, a strange musician unlike anyone else.”