Erik Satie: Complete Piano Music (Aldo Ciccolini, pianist; EMI). There aren`t many pianists today who would care to record Satie`s complete piano music, nor are there many who could do it justice.

Today I heard–for the thousandth time– Satie’s famous solo piano tryptic 3 Gymopedies—the title refers to an ancient Spartan dance performed by naked men. Satie was an eccentric who gave his ...

Erik Satie's music is better described by what it isn't than what it is. A contrarian, he wrote anti-emotional, anti-virtuosic and anti-Wagnerian music, basically rejecting all the major trends of ...

Safe at home this spring has not necessarily meant sane at home. One antidote is a mega-dose of Erik Satie. The French composer’s most beguiling and languidly becalming piano pieces, particularly the ...

Aldo Ciccolini at the piano. Back in the 1960s, composer Erik Satie’s limpid, odd, but wonderful solo piano music became known largely through the recordings of the late Aldo Ciccolini, who very ...

Myriad 3, “Moons” (Alma). New jazz records by Myriad 3 are usually big news on Canadian jazz radio. Since Toronto jazz radio is the only jazz radio we regularly have here, that makes them big news ...

Lovers of Erik Satie’s exquisite piano music would baulk at the mere suggestion that his later pieces are just mood-setting background music. In fact, it was he that inferred this by describing some ...

A timeless television theme tune, ‘Satie-fied’, in a sublime rendition for solo piano courtesy of Classic FM presenter, Tim Lihoreau. The popular British sitcom Blackadder takes its cast of ...

Pipedown is the campaign to get rid of the scourge of unwanted piped background muzak, whether on hold on the telephone, in a restaurant, or queuing in a supermarket. The late pianist Alfred Brendel ...

Safe at home has not necessarily meant sane at home. One antidote is a mega-dose of Erik Satie. The French composer’s most beguiling and languidly becalming piano pieces, particularly the inescapable ...