Unsent Love Letters – Meditations on Erik Satie: Kats-Chernin And Cislowska On ABC Classics
Unsent Love Letters – Meditations on Erik Satie is the new album from ABC CLassics which features music by Elena Kats-Chernin inspired by Erik Satie, performed by pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska.
It is available digitally and as a double CD
After Satie’s death, dozens of unsent love letters were found in his Paris apartment. Now composer Elena Kats-Chernin and pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska post these letters in 26 meditative and passionate piano miniatures inspired by Satie’s extraordinary life and music.
The album is a musical memoir from one composer to another; from Kats-Chernin, the Uzbekistan-born Australian to Satie, the French composer whose eccentricities are legendary and whose music is timeless.
“Satie’s life was a fascinating, fervoursome affair,” says pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska, “from the first strike of love and then lifelong estrangement with artist and muse Suzanne Valadon, to the unexpected celebrity and conflict of his last ten years. After he died, friends gaining access to his apartment, for the first time in almost three decades, found conditions both perplexing and romantically fastidious in their own way: two grand pianos one atop the other, one chair, one table, seven velvet suits and the love letters – many, many unsent love letters.”
The album reflects aspects of Satie’s life, with music that ranges from seductive Orientalism to hypnotic melodies reminiscent of the innovative, transcendent beauty of Satie’s own piano pieces: ‘imaginary building’ conjures up his sketches of imaginary buildings which he even advertised in the newspaper for rent and purchase, ‘very shiny’ contains one of his characteristically opaque performance directions; ‘postcard to a critic’, follows Satie’s explosive response to a negative review which led to a spell in gaol.
The buoyant rhythms and rhapsodic harmonic style that have earned Kats-Chernin the reputation as one of the best-loved composers of her generation provide the perfect lens through which to observe a musical great of the 20th century.
Unsent Love Letters – Meditations on Erik Satie is a world-premiere recording, made in Kats-Chernin’s presence and performed by her very own choice of pianist, the ARIA-Award-winning Tamara-Anna Cislowska, described as “Australian piano gold” by BBC Music Magazine and praised for her “profoundly affecting” musicianship by Gramophone.
