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03/30/2025
“Satie – Planès”
Erik Satie: Trois Gymnopédies – Gnossiennes n° 1 - 5 – Avant‑dernières pensées – Embryons desséchés – Je te veux – Pièces froides – Trois Mélodies [2] – Trois Morceaux en forme de poire [1] – Valse‑ballet – Chapitres tournés en tous sens – La Diva de l’Empire
Alain Planès, François Pinel [1] (piano), Marc Mauillon [2] (baritone)
Recording: Abbaye de Royaumont, Asnières‑sur‑Oise, France (March 2024) – 70’24
harmonia mundi HMM902749 (Distributed by [Integral]) – Booklet in French and English – Librettos in French and English
Luckily for me, this harmonia mundi recording by virtuoso French pianist Alain Planès opens with Satie’s beguilingly pedestrian Valse‑ballet. Here, one is, perhaps, transported to a fin de siècle Parisian café, hearing the piece drifting out of a second floor window. Satie was, after all, a successful cabaret pianist living the bohemian life of the Montmartre. He composed the piece while still a student at the Paris Conservatoire, from which he was eventually expelled for being “lazy” and possessing “little talent”. Satie later wrote, “My role is not to be a servant to tradition, but to question it.” and “I am not seeking to delight the ear, but to touch the soul.”
Those artistic goals are vividly present in Planès’ performance of Première Gnossienne, the first of Satie’s quintet of Gnossiennes. Planès traverses the free‑form chordal structures which just also happen to be one of the musicological keys unlocking the doors of 20th century music...a new vocabulary not lost on Satie’s contemporaries, Ravel, Debussy and Poulenc who all acknowledged Satie’s influence on their music.
Pianist Alfred Cortot described the agency of Satie’s music that “seems to dissolve the barriers between sound and silence.” That observation comes in clear view as Planès delves deeper into the repertoire with one of Satie’s most famous works, the mesmeric performance of Première Gymnopédie. The lore of its etymology alludes to a ‘labyrinth dance’ ritual by naked soldiers of Greek myth...or not. Satie didn’t say.
The dissonance keys of Deuxième Gnossienne act as an entr’acte as Planès delves deeper into Satie’s repertoire with the prismatic musings of Piecès froides: Première partie: Airs à fuir (English translation: “Cold Pieces: Part One: Airs to Scare”) with a feral medley: (“D’une manière très particulière” (dancy); “Modestement” (a lullaby); “S’inviter” (pianism study) – all hotter when titled in Planès’ hands.
Stoic as they sound, the haunting Deuxième Gymnopédie, with its piano rhythms, inspire reason and hope. It’s followed by the arabesque atmospherics of Quatrième Gnossienne which seems like the soundtrack to a classic French cinema starring Jeanne Moreau.
Planès is joined by pianist François Pinel in Satie’s Trois Morceaux en forme de poire, a seven piece miniature consisting of placid lyrical tempos overrun by dissonant upper key hammers which give way to multi-directional, four‑handed volleys, subverted and anchored in new harmonic vistas. Again, Satie keeps his musical cards neatly tucked away in his velvet suit (he had seven of them), and that mystery makes the music all the more captivating.
Satie’s three-episodes of Embryons désséches (desiccated embryos), has the feel of three minute structured improv exercises, starting with the athletic playfulness of “Embryon desséché d’holothurie”, followed by the alternately dirge‑like “Embryon desséché d’edriophthalma” that gives way to a closing lullaby, “Embryon de podophthalma” with its café vamp that just tickles the keys with a galloping finish.
Trois Mélodies strike as filler vocal interludes, but for baritone Marc Mauillon, he makes the most of it. First, on Satie’s clockwork is the dizziness of “La Statue de bronze”, then Mauillon’s tranquil vocalese “Daphénéo”, and concluding with the lyrical allegretto, “Le Chapelier” (after Gounod). Planès’ flawless accompaniment frames Mauillon’s dynamic delivery.
The four and a half minutes of Chapitres tournés en tous sens (“Chapters turn in all directions”) are, indeed, minimalist freeform musings (one phrase sampled a half a century later as the murderous theme to Alex North’s film score, The Bad Seed.
Troisième Gymnopédie (“Lent et grave”) and Cinquième Gnossienne (“Modéré”) have a shadowy pastorale feel, and act as a meditative interlude before the pure music dreamscapes of Avant‑dernières pensées (Penultimate thought), composed of “Idylle”, “Aubade” and “Méditation”. Planès illuminates both the intimacy and the edginess of these pieces.
The final tracks on this collection include the theatrically buoyant La Diva de l’Empire (laced with Joplin‑esque ragtime), followed by the jazzy waltz, Je te veux, a deliciously extra piece of the Satie musical puzzle.
Planès writes briefly of his almost lifelong engagement with Satie’s music, and this collection on the centenary of the composer’s death is, indeed, a fine tribute. Inside the CD booklet, Alain Planès credits his teacher, Jacques Février “who taught me to play Satie without sentimentality, and with a bit of detachment.” But he adds, “I hope my interpretation of this music will not make the composer, wherever he is, fly into one of his legendary fits of rage.”
Lewis J. Whittington
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