Is it me, or has the centenary year marking Erik Satie’s death been rather muted so far? Recent releases have not matched the quantity (or quality) of recordings celebrating 150 years since the composer’s birth in 2016, which included impressive complete sets of the composer’s piano music by Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Decca) and Jeroen van Veen (Brilliant Classics), among others.
Be that as it may, this engaging collection of somewhat less familiar Satie piano pieces by Christina Bjørkøe offers a timely reminder that there is much to explore beyond the popular Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. The three preludes that appear at the end of ‘Satie Surprises’ (they were originally written for Joséphin Péladan’s poetic drama Le fils des étoiles) date from around the same time as the Gymnopédies but offer a very different view of the composer’s style. The use of parallel stacked fourth harmonies, strange chordal juxtapositions and abrupt sectional contrasts must have left contemporary audiences bewildered and perplexed. As with the quirky Airs à faire fuir, Bjørkøe’s performances are well judged and measured, with appropriate (if occasionally restrained) use of tempo, evolved melodic shaping and characterisation, alongside a clear grasp of the music’s overall design.
Perhaps one of the main surprises in this collection is that Satie’s music doesn’t always inhabit the kind of eccentric world on which the composer’s reputation was often built. For example, the Deux Rêveries and three late Nocturnes – elegantly played by Bjørkøe – at times project a Schumann-like impressionism, while ‘Effronterie’ from the mid-period Six Pièces de la période possesses an almost Brahmsian heft and presence.
Bjørkøe is not afraid of allowing the music to speak for itself, either, as heard in the restrained Gymnopédie-like ‘Son binocle’ from Les trois valses distinguées du précieux dégouté or balanced use of melody and accompaniment in the three Avant-dernières pensées (‘Penultimate Thoughts’), where ethereal-sounding melodies are woven around a series of ostinato figures in a set of picture-perfect homages to Debussy, Dukas and Roussel respectively.
Benefiting from a rich, rounded piano tone and generous acoustic, ‘Satie Surprises’ occasionally suffers from ambient sounds, but one suspects that this wouldn’t have bothered the composer who coined the term musique d’ameublement (‘furniture music’) and wrote music for the clutter and clatter of bistros and salons. Recommended. Pwyll ap Siôn, Gramophone, July Issue, 2025