Satie - Piano Works

The Guardian 60

Olga Scheps (piano)
(RCA Red Label)

Erik Satie (1866-1925) occupies a unique place in the musical pantheon, eschewing all artifice and show, stripping his compositions back to the bare essentials and creating a world of calm and order (he called it “music without sauerkraut”). His Trois Gymnopédies (1888) and Six Gnossiennes (1889-97) are popular examples of his style, played here with unremarkable simplicity (for there is no other way to play them) by the Russian-born pianist Olga Scheps. More interesting are the Trois Sarabandes (1887), particularly the example in F minor, made almost entirely of a luminous, graceful chord progression. Scheps conjures this otherworld with admirable poise but, given the material, the temperature of this recording rarely rises above blood level.