Presto Recordings of the Year
Finalist 2023

Bertrand Chamayou (piano)

Cage: All Sides of the Small Stone for Erik Satie and (Secretly Given to Jim Tenney as a Koan)
Satie: Gnossienne No. 1
Cage: Prelude for Meditation
Satie: Gymnopédie No. 1
Satie: Six Gnossiennes. No. 2, Avec étonnement & No. 3, Lent
Cage: A Room
Cage: In a Landscape
Satie: Rêverie de L'Enfance de Pantagruel
Satie: Véritables préludes flasques (3), pour un chien
Satie: Gymnopédie No. 2
Satie: Sports et divertissements: No. 9, Le bain de mer
Satie: Gnossienne No. 4
Satie: Sports et divertissements: No. 2, La balançoire
Cage: Swinging
Satie: Gymnopédie No. 3
Satie: Gnossienne No. 5
Satie: Nocturne No. 2 'Simplement'
Satie: Sports et divertissements: No. 17, Le tango perpétuel
Cage: Perpetual Tango
Satie: Gnossienne No. 6
Satie: Sarabande No. 3
Satie: Songe-creux
Satie: Prelude du Premier Acte - La Vocation
Satie: Gnossienne No. 7
Tenney: 3 Pages in the Shape of a Pear
Cage: Dream

“Erik Satie and John Cage are UFOs in the world of music, because they envisioned music through a completely different prism,” says pianist Bertrand Chamayou. “They are pioneers in the sense that, for many people, they changed the very idea of what music must be.” With his album Letter(s) to Erik Satie Chamayou pays tribute to two idiosyncratic, innovative and influential composers, one born in Normandy in 1866, the other in Los Angeles in 1912. There is a strong connection between them: Cage considered Satie a source of inspiration. Satie takes pride of place on the album with such pieces as the three Gymnopédies and the seven Gnossiennes, while Cage is represented by five pieces and a work attributed to him following its rediscovery amongst the papers of his disciple James Tenney – whose musical homage to Satie also features in the programme. Chamayou recorded the album at the state-of-the-art Miraval Studios in Provence, which inspired him to take an experimental approach: “I thought we should do something a little different – and I thought of Erik Satie. This was an opportunity to get really intimate with the piano … Satie is really a special case, a strange musician unlike anyone else.”

"as Bertrand Chamayou’s beautifully planned and presented sequence of miniatures by both composers shows, Satie’s music imprinted itself on Cage’s own piano works, especially in some of his pieces for conventional and prepared piano from the late 1940s...it’s a gem of a collection." - The Guardian, 16th November 2023.