Five stars: This is some of the best Satie playing I have ever heard, beautifully recorded and annotated

SATIE Surprises: Piano Music of Erik Satie Ÿ Christina Bjørkøe (pn) Ÿ OUR 8.226929 (59:45)
Torben Enghoff’s extended and exemplary booklet notes for this release, lavishly illustrated in color, is almost worth the price of the disc alone, and sets the scene for this exploration of the unique world of the enigmatic Erik Satie.
It is quite right to start with an overture, or, as here, Petite Ouverure à danser (written before 1900). A mere one and a half minutes long, it encapsulates Satie’s sophistication; Facheux example (1905-13) is effectively a question mark in music while Effronterie (1906-13) is as close as Satie gets to Romanticism.
Danish pianist Christina Bjørkøe's playing exudes a deep understanding of Satie’s writing. She locates a deep vein of mysticism in the music here (try the Airs à faire fior of 1897, particularly the outlying first and third; in the latter, there is a whiff of Ravel’s waltzes to add to the already heady mix). She allows the music space without ever creating a sense of loss of direction (the strangely-titled Sans binocle is. case in point, as is the next piece we hear, Profondeur).She is unafraid of pieces that seem to be almost completely untethered, leaving the listener to find their own way: the two Rêveries of 1910/11, perhaps particularly the first, furnish the perfect example.
The programing is intelligent, too, mostly chronological, Only a few pieces are truly stand-alone: most (but not all) come from collections (Musiques intimes et secrètes;, 1906-13; Pièces froides, 1897; Les trois Valses distinguées du précieux dégoute, 1915; Six Pièces de la Période, 1906-13; Avant-Dernièrs Pensées, 1915; Cinq Nocturnes, 1915; Deux rêveries nocturnes, 1910/11; Préludes, 1888-92). The 1894 Prélude de la porte héroïque du ciel is, along with the Petite ouverture another stand-alone piece, prayerful, meditative, quiet, tending towards Impressionism while holding sway at the least moment. It is in Songe-creux (from Six Pièces de la Période) that a whiff of Wagnerian chromaticism arrives before the individual piece form 1897, Caresse, does what it says on the tin: one can almost see Bjørkøe's fingers stroking the keys of her Steinway; Poésie, which follows, seems a logical extension.
Nice, too, to have three pieces dedicated to fellow composes in a row: an Idylle for Debussy, an Aubade for Dukas, and a Méditation for Roussel followed by another group of three, this time Nocturnes (1915, collectively, the Avant-Dernières pensées). They include surprisingly robust passages (for this composer, at least): dark skies on the particular night of Nocturne I, for example. But the second Nocturne takes us to places of “Peace Profound” (to borrow a Rosicrucianism), only to rustle the leaves. On a performative level, Bjørkøe's ability to create octave legato alongside ideal pedaling is a miracle; her relishing of the harmonies in the third Nocturne, too, is insightful, dark and yet each element perfectly audible. Bjørkøe’s pedaling, here to ensure clarity, impresses again in Nostalgie (from Musiques intimes et secrètes).
It is the tiny Froide songerie and Prélude canin (notice, not "canon"; instead, “little canine”!) that seem to represent the quintessential Satie, and Bjørkøe injects whole universes into them. Although in a very different musical language, there is a real parallel between the brevities of Satie and Webern, she seems to be saying. The disc ends with three Préludes (I-III), almost impossibly beautiful, the stark octaves of the third making full impact.
The recording (Danish National Academy of Music, Odense) is exemplary as we have come to expect from OUR Recordings. A true miracle of a disc: and not a Gymnopédie, or even a Gnossiènne, in sight.
It is perhaps to Aldo Ciccolini we should look for a comparison: especially as Warner Erato has released a 60-CD box (yes, sixty) of his recordings. His March 1956 recordings from the Salle de la Mutualité, Paris, of the Trois Valses distinguées, Nocturnes and Avant-dermières Pensées all nestle on the fifth disc of the set; while disc 24 contains Ciccolini’s Petite Ouverture à danser (playful), the complete Six Pièces de la Période and the Prélude de la porte héroïque (robust, dignified), all recorded in the Salle Wagram.
Note that Pristine Classics has released some of these Ciccolini recordings in an Ambient Stereo XR remastering. Ciccolini’s Satie is also full of understanding, the recording of course less present than OUR’s. His playing is generally a little drier than Bjørkøe's: it is not a question of one better than the other here, but of complementary approaches. I do urge you to hear Bjørkøe, and ideally as a sequence of OUR’s 27 tracks. This is some of the best Satie playing I have ever heard, beautifully recorded, illustrated, and annotated. Colin Clarke