Search - Erik Satie, Jules Massenet :: Erik Satie Compositeur de Musique

On this disc Italian avant-garde accordionist Teodoro Anzellotti spins out the charming, lilting, and quite familiar solo piano melodies of Erik Satie (the entire "Sports et Divertissements" and "Gnossiennes," the always popular "Three Elegant Waltzes by a Squeamish Pansy," and others). While this music was composed in perhaps Satie's most humorous period, the accordion does not emphasize that quality or turn it into kitsch. Instead Anzellotti takes Satie's mostly linear melodies and teases them out into clouds of chords, like straight hair is teased into a burr, a rat's nest. Not that the music becomes an absolute blur, but instead the crisp and sharp are changed into something more warm and enveloping. Through his techniques, the transitions faintly overlap and tempos are ever-so-slightly halted, all with the effect of rendering the very familiar less so. Beautiful. --Robin Edgerton