17 VANESSA WAGNER & WILHEM LATCHOUMIA This is a particularly colourful album, yet it begins and ends with exceptionally austere pieces by Satie. What is their symbolic function? Vanessa Wagner: They’re a nod to our American programme. We usually play ‘Manière de commencement’ as an encore, to remind our listeners just how important Satie was as a precursor of the minimalist, repetitive movement: after all, he went so far as to write a work, Vexations, that was intended to be repeated 840 times! He’s a composer who deserves to be more highly regarded, an innovator whose music was almost at odds with his time. Through a language of great simplicity, he conveys a despair, a melancholy that move me deeply. After the profusion of notes in La Valse and La Mer, ending with the delicate nostalgia of a gymnopédie is like bringing a story to a close! Wilhem Latchoumia: John Cage, who gave the world premiere of Vexations alongside David Tudor, regarded Satie as one of the great figures of modernism. And we thought it appropriate to play his music through the prism of Debussy, who, as Paul Griffiths has said, brought music into the modern era of the early twentieth century with his Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Because it was Debussy’s orchestral transcription of the Première Gymnopédie that served as the basis for our own arrangement of the piece for two pianos. Isn’t it rather odd to make a transcription of a transcription? As odd as Satie himself! For us, it’s a way of getting closer to his eccentricity!
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTAwOTQx