no et me

The members of Cinquecento turn to perhaps the pre-eminent composer of the sixteenth century: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah would have been integral to the liturgical rites of Holy Week: here is one of the most sublime.

The operas of Grétry are seldom recorded, and even less often performed, today. The composer was for a time the personal director of music to Marie-Antoinette and there is a strong vein of pretty artificiality which can seem at best trivial in unsympathetic hands. The present recording is certainly not in such hands as Beecham had a particular liking for the music of Grétry and his contemporaries.

Philippe est chanteur et dans l?existence d?un chanteur, il y a des moments où tout s?accélère surtout quand une groupie déjantée, des parents délaissés, une ornithologue lunaire et un ami d?enfance coriace conspirent à vous compliquer la vie? Comment en sortir ?"En fait, tout a commencé après mon concert d?hier soir… je me retire dans ma loge, normal, pour me reposer…

Erik Satie is a beacon around which all kinds of musicians never cease to turn and marvel. And it’s been the case for more than 100 years. American minimalists (Glass, Reich, Adams, Riley, La Monte Young) today recognize in him a kind of spiritual father. Through this double-disc, I wanted to pay a tribute to him, through his works but also those of his friends, his followers and his heirs. I thus discovered new works never recorded (Cliquet-Pleyel, Mesens, Dortu, Fargeat) and also generated new compositions. My personal approach to sincerity also led me to choose, for the interpretation of his works, a piano that he could have known: a Blüthner from 1900. As a historically well-informed musician, the last track of the first disc, Je te veux, has been recorded on Pleyel droit from 1923, not very well tuned, with hazardous mechanics and a good cabaret taste. Here is a particular discographic object with very subjective musical choices. After three records dedicated to some American figures (Moondog, Glass and Hovhaness) I was dead set on showing how important Erik Satie was for a few musicians, and to illustrate how he is a tutelary and smiling figure of a contemporary musical movement open to side steps - let's call them minimalists or not, it doesn't matter. I have brought together all these figures under the term "gymnopedists".