SATIE: Piano Pieces
Jean-Yves Thibaudet- Decca 289 470 290- 78:37
This recording is not merely one more tribute to the art of the Master of Arcueil. The fruit of a sensitive soul very much in sync with the lack of ornamentation and mordant irony of the Daumier of the music world, its intelligence enriches a discography that is already overflowing. One must first salute the relevance of a program in which reflections are mirrored, unlike the usual scholarly compilations that resemble mere catalogues. The unavoidable Gymnopédies are scattered like pearls between the cabaret-like verve of the waltz Je te veux and a Jack in the box that seems mounted on springs. Not only does Thibaudet avoid the trap of monotony, but he also introduces a new repertoire of hitherto unrecorded discoveries: the Cinq Grimaces pour le Songe d’une nuit d’été, composed for the three Fratellini Clowns and subsequently arranged for piano by Milhaud; Angora Ox, completed by musicologist Johny Fritz; a 7th Gnossienne that was never part of any collection; two movements of the Belle Excentrique for solo piano that seem to be arranged by the composer’s own hand. Lastly, L’Enfance de Ko-Quo, the manuscript of which was discovered in 1999, reveals Satie’s pedagogical preoccupations and his concern to "prepare children for the world of sounds of modern music". A sort of Mikrokosmos, but less ambitious.
But more important than these curiosities, enhanced by the enlightened commentaries of Ornella Volta, the Satie specialist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s interpretation rivals the best. With the finesse of his touch, the slow pieces never become soporific. The melodies, experienced in a single breath, wend their way at the proper tempo towards a silence enriched by an eloquent and reflective past. In the Sonatine Bureaucratique, the pianist behaves more like a Wall Street CEO than a French penpusher. As for the Diva de l’Empire, she rolls her hips like a woman in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting. A disc like this provides unlimited enjoyment.
VILLEMIN
Published in American Record Guide, Vol. 65, N. 6