Christina Bjørkøe: Satie Surprises
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Timed to coincide with the centenary of the French composer's death, Satie Surprises is noteworthy for many things, including the absence from Christina Bjørkøe's hour-long recital of his ever-popular Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. While their inclusion would have been in no way objectionable, it's refreshing to see the Denmark pianist fashioning a programme featuring pieces less commonly presented. The listener beguiled by the lyrical tenderness of the music might be surprised to discover how eccentric Satie (1866-1925) could be. A multi-faceted portrait emerges from Torben Enghoff's in-depth liner notes, which, by his own admission, are less about the pieces presented on the recording and more Satie's life and music.

There's no denying the sensual charm of the tri-part Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, but Satie's story goes far beyond these ear-catching miniatures. According to Enghoff, Satie was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatory at thirteen but was deemed by his teachers talented but lazy and eventually cast out. He made a rather different impression when, after being accepted in 1905 to the Schola Cantorum to study counterpoint under Albert Roussel, his teacher lauded him for being disciplined and punctual, and Satie eventually “left the establishment with top marks in his diploma.”

Subsequent to that, he performed as a cabaret and bar pianist in Montmartre and later befriended Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky, all three ardent admirers of Satie's work. In 1917, his music for the ballet Parade attracted attention (and not just because its score included parts for a typewriter and siren); other less-lauded works followed, among them the stage production Socrate and the ballets Mercure and Relâche. Enghoff highlights some of Satie's eccentricities, from composition titles (e.g., Flabby Preludes to a Dog) to instructional markings (the performer told to play the piece “like a nightingale with toothache”) and quotes text from a particularly vicious and profanity-filled postcard Satie sent to a critic who'd belittled his music for Parade (the text was so blistering, the composer was taken to court and sued for defamation of character).

The performances by Bjørkøe might suggest she's a French music specialist but, in fact, her repertoire extends broadly. Born in 1970 and educated at The Juilliard School of Music and The Royal Danish Academy of Music, she made her debut as a soloist with orchestra at sixteen and is today in demand as a recitalist, chamber musician, and orchestra soloist. She's performed throughout the world and issued recordings of material by Beethoven, J. S. Bach, Chopin, Fanny Mendelssohn, and the Schumanns as well as ones featuring music by Carl Nielsen, Knudåge Riisager, and Axel Borup Jørgensen. When not recording and performing, Bjørkøe is an associate professor at the Danish National Academy of Music, Odense.

Satie Surprises comprises twenty-seven tracks, but they're not all unrelated. Interspersed amongst the standalones are three Airs à faire fuir settings, three preludes, three nocturnes, and two reveries. The pianist elected not to sequence the material chronologically, so the album jumps back and forth from the preludes, written between 1888 and1892, to the nocturnes from 1919. All but four of the album's pieces are in the one- to three-minute range, and the familiar charm of Satie's music is present the moment Petite ouverture à danser inaugurates the release. One exquisite gem after another follows, each rendered with poise by Bjørkøe and the pianist sensitively attuned to the dynamic ebb and flow of the music.

From 1897, the first Airs à faire fuir exudes a haunting, ruminative quality reminiscent of the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes; the shorter second one is sunnier by comparison, while the third sprinkles its haunting tone with dashes of enigmatic mystery. Written the same year, Caresse likewise sounds very much like the handiwork of the composer who birthed those famous works. The three pieces collected under the title Avant-dernières Pensées (1915) are dedicated to key figures in Satie's life, with Idylle, Aubade, and Méditation respectively conceived with Debussy, Paul Dukas, and Roussel in mind. Whereas the atmospheric Idylle could pass for a work by Debussy, the playful Aubade seems a fitting evocation of Dukas; Méditation, on the other hand, registers as a gently sparkling homage to Satie's one-time teacher. Pretty material is abundant (from Valses Distinguees, 1915's Son binocle; 1894's Prélude de la porte héroique du ciel), and some pieces are less obscure than others. Other recordings of the nocturnes, for instance, are available, though not so plentifully that the appearance of these dignified expressions on Bjørkøe's set is unwelcome.

As Enghoff notes, while Satie played piano music by Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and others, his own exemplifies little of their influence and is resolutely his. It might seem odd for John Cage to have cited Satie as a profound inspiration for his own work until one remembers that the French composer's notorious Vexations instructs its performer to repeat its section of music 840 times. The words poet Jean Cocteau used to describe him bear repeating: “The smallest work by Satie is small in the way a keyhole is small. Everything changes when you put your eye to it.” Attending closely to the miniatures on Bjørkøe's releases brings with it no small number of surprises.

August 2025