Here are Armengaud's CD's on Mandala (previously on Circe
label):
MAN 4821 Famous Works
MAN 4822 Humorous Pieces
MAN 4823 Surrealism
MAN 4824 Mystical Works
MAN 4825 Works For Piano Duet
MAN4821/25 Complete Piano Works - all five CD's
MAN 4867 Melodies And Songs (with
Anne-Sophie Schmidt, sop)
MAN 4879 Mon Ami Satie
("Une Heure d'Humour avec Satie: Pieplu recitant &
Armenguad, piano." Don't know what this is,
but it includes recitation by someone named "Pieplu." Probably
not in print, will try to find out more.)
MAN 4882 Complete Piano Duets (with
Dominique Merlet)
(I guess this is the same as MAN 4825, not sure.)
The Armengaud recordings have floated from label to label (La Chanto
du Monde, Circe, Mandala …) The CD discussed below, Insolite,
Le Chant du Monde 78.805, is probably included on one or more of the Mandala
CDs.
Fanfare Nov/Dec 86, E.G.:
Compares Insolite with Jean-Joel
Barbier, Vol. 2.
Sports and Divertissments, Piéces Froides, Allegro,
Cinéma, Je te Veux, Les Pantins Dansents, Le
Piége de Méduse, Le Poissen rêveur, Valse
Ballet, Versets Laïques et Sompteux.
The selections on Erik Satie piano recital recordings are nearly as impossible
to match up as on the "My Favorite Chopin" type. All of the works
are small and even the largest, such as Sports et Divertissements,
are really collections of miniatures. For all of his outrageousness, Satie
was an original voice whose legend and influence might unfairly overshadow
his real worth as a composer. For an evaluation of his music one may either
go to the scores, which are not that difficult to play badly, or to recordings,
which are in surprising abundance.
Recordings are essential since Satie probably gets fewer live performances
than almost any peripheral composer. His music was better championed by
rock groups than by major pianists, although Aldo Ciccolini's six-record
survey established his own name as well as Satie's.
Armengaud tends toward the more neglected fringes of this neglected repetoire.
He includes such youthful works as the Delibesian Valse Ballet,
the early minimalism of Cinéma, and the slyly humorous austerity
of the Piéces froides. Barbier chooses a more middle of the
road program of humorous pieces. The only shared music is Sports et
Divertissements, which I find more sporty and diverting in Barbier's
recording.
The Accord recording was made in 1968, and that old devil hiss rears its
obtrussive head. <Armengaud>'s 1985 CD has no such problems, although
neither piano is that attractively recorded. Each disc is 61 minutes and
change, and the program notes are negligible, mostly occupied with the
witty tempo, expression, and narrative markings that make Satie scores
so unique.
I suspect that the Armengaud disc will come off my shelves for it repertoire,
while the Barbier will be listened to for pleasure.
Fanfare July/Aug 86, J.D.W.:
(reviews Insolite)
The non-routine quality implied by the album title is born out by the contents
and performances. Aside from the Dreaming Fish, Sports et Divertissements,
and Piéces froides, the music Armengaud has chosen is not
to be encountered in every other Satie conflation. The Versets,
Valse ballets, Allegro, and Cinéma are claimed
to be "inédits." This seems acceptable, since I have not
had the tolerance to keep Aldo Ciccolini's survey on hand to check up with.
Most of the new material is unsurprising, well-crafted bits and pieces.
The main advance is the presence of Cinéma, the piano reduction
of the Relâche entr'acte and action music. As film accompaniment,
this is a fairly primitive enterprise, with subjectively interminable stretches
of repetition of simple figures. That may be fine in its proper theatrical
place and it's certainly in line with Satie's "furniture music"
notions, but as the subject and central attention-occupier of a recording,
it may not prove altogether engaging.
Armengaud is a clean player, voicing these pieces with lapidary care and
consistently good pacing. Compared with the extremes of Satie performers
Aldo Ciccolini and Pascal Rogé (the former the ultimate puncher-out,
the latter too lyrical and relaxed), Armengaud places himself slightly
Ciccolini-wards of center. Chant du Monde's piano recording is good in
definition and range, pressed a bit too noisily for tastes currently influenced
by CD silences. Recommended.
Stereophile, Dec 89, Igor Kipnis:
(review of Ciccolini and Armengaud CD sets)
So far as interpretation is concerned, both pianists admirably refrain
from the kind of over-statement that is anathema to Satie, ie, sentimentality
is eschewed totally, though neither pianist plays antiseptically. Ciccolini
perhaps has the better sense of flow, the wittier statement, the marginally
livelier and charming approach. Yet…Armengaud …compels in his own slightly
more sober way, often performing with admirable understanding and sensitivity
…
American Record Guide July/Aug 89,
Ashby:
(review of Armengaud set)
To use a metaphor of which the composer would no doubt have approved, do
you like your Satie straight-up or on the rocks? If the former, Armengaud
may be to your liking: his Gnossiennes are certainly oppressed by
no heavily pedalled, Oriental mysticism (these wonderful pieces were partly
inspired by the same gamelan orchestra that overwhelmed Debussy at the
1889 Paris Exhibition), while his Gymnopédies evoke no Keatsian
images on Grecian urns. A few interpretive incongruities apart (such as
blatantly sustaining the uppermost pitches of the first Enfantillage
pittoresque), he takes Satie and his infrequent directions very much
at face value - at times, as with his rather tiresomely uniform and exaggeratedly
sharp staccatos, too much so. While agreeing with the Armengaud's quoted
statement that the Satie pianist must "guard against all melodic overstatement,
and even more so, against any 'aquerelle' preciousness", I find this
playing too plain and indifferent to the latent beauties of the music.
The dynamic range is narrow, with not a great deal of difference between
pianissimo and forte, while (given Satie's typically ambiguous
tempo indications), Armengaud's tempos tend to fall into an unfortunately
dull and metronomically maintained molto moderto category.
But Armengaud's responses inevitably vary, and it must be said that he
is sensitive in the six Nocturnes in a way that he is not with the
Gymnopédies, Gnossiennes, and Sarabandes, which
are so often nagging and relentless in pulse. Occasionally he also tends
to overinterpret, as with his slowing for the final chords of the Embryons
desséchés, thereby ruining the joke of the listener's
not quite knowing when the piece is going to end. My allegiances remain
with Pascal Rogé 's slowly unfolding Satie
series on London, a more free, patrician, and overtly impressionistic conception
of a composer I will continue to consider more savant than idiot-savant.
Circé <old label> has taken pains with the accompanying booklet,
which contains numerous illustrations, illuminating quotations, and, most
praiseworthy of all, the composer's joking texts from every piece on these
four discs. Unfortunately, less care has been lavished on the recording
itself: the piano agreeably unpredictable in registration, is so close
that we hear a good deal of the pedal mechanism, louder moments tend to
be steely, and there is often some faint electrical noise to be heard,
particularly in the sixth Gnossienne.
Fanfare May/June 89, William
Zagorski:
( review of complete solo piano works)
I want desperately to be able to recommend this nearly five-hour collection
of Satie's piano music for two hands, first because it is more complete
than any other collection currently available by a good margin, containing
virtually every two-handed piece Satie left us with the exception of several
unfinished fragments. Second, it offers several premiere recordings: an
Allegro, a seventh Gnossienne, the Petite Sonata,
the first two-hand version of La Belle Excentrique, a sixth Nocturne,
and Versets laïques et somptueux. Third, it contains a nicely
laid-out, well-illustrated, bilingual booklet (with an almost literate
English section) of some eighty-six pages which contains, along with a
delightful collection of drawings, cartoons and photographs of Satie, the
verses he composed as appendages to the scores of some of these piano pieces.
Like the music, they are variously humorous, elegant, grim, laconic, epigrammatic,
and grotesque, and can provide the listener with a convenient, pleasurable,
and entertaining entrée into the core of these rich and pithy pieces.
Finally, this collection generously offers four hours and forty minutes
of music…
Jean-Pierre Armengaud unfortunately delivers the most boring, undifferentiated,
colorless, and humorously grim playing of this music I have yet encountered.
To be sure, he is technically competent enough to realize the notes and
the time values, and indeed it takes a good deal of musical skill and control
to play the Trois sarabandes so impeccably at such a dirge-like
temp. Unfortunately, the music is the first casualty in such a treatment.
The Allegro which follows comes off with a similar effect, despite
its somewhat elevated tempo, as do the Sept Gnossiennes. If you
are lucky enough to own or to have access to the old, long-deleted William
Masselos MGM disc containing, among other items, the Gnossiennes,
cherish it. If you don't have it, start haunting flea markets. Two minutes
of Masselos gives one a vivid idea of what this music really is. <it
should be available on CD>
These turgid performances are not well served by the bottom-heavy, cavernous
sound. It seems as if the microphone was placed under the piano. Pedaling
noise is downright disconcerting. Likewise, there is a lot of swishing
noise (breathing?) and, from time to time, various ambient rattles and
squeaks of an indeterminate nature. Occasionally faint buzzing and crackling
become apparent, sounding like a lifted ground on an audio board at some
stage of production. The digital system, unfortunately, reproduces all
of this (though not the music) with startling clarity. By far the worst
problem in this recording is the occasional overload distortion in the
loud moments. Gee, I thought digital recording was supposed to have cured
that sort of thing.
The splendid notes tell me that Jean-Pierre Armengaud is a specialist in
twentieth-century music with eight previous recordings to his credit, none
of which is currently distributed here. He is also the author of a book
on Satie, which gives me a speculative insight into the faults of his performances.
Armengaud approaches this music with an attitude of hushed reverence. I'm
certain that if Satie could have heard these performances, he would have
been moved to create a marvelous musical satire.
Completeness becomes a liability with performances as grim as these. Besides
William Masselos's recording, I recommend Aldo Ciccolini's current, very
incomplete CD reissue on Angel. I hope Angel will get around to reissuing
the balance of his material, at one time there were six volumes of the
stuff. <EMI only reissued a double CD from the old series, since they
were digitally re-recorded.>
Not recommended.
Fanfare Nov/Dec 96, Elliot S.
Hurwitt:
Complete works for Piano Duet, Mandala 4882
Parade, Trois petites pièces montées, En
Habit de cheval, Trois Morceaux en forme de poire, La belle excentrique,
Apercus désagréables
Erik Satie, history's greatest musical eccentric, has always
posed a problem for performers. Merry prankster or sad, childlike romantic?
Well, both, as it turns out, and this makes it more difficult to achieve
a convincing interpretation than one might think on first glance. Thirty
years ago, Satie recordings were still something of a rarity, although
his cult had been growing for decades, fueled by the promotion of Darius
Milhaud, Virgil Thomson, and John Cage, among others. His American promoters
tended to emphasize his satirical and naughty sides, since that suited
their own agenda.
However, once Satie began to enter the mainstream of our culture by way
of Aldo Ciccolini's first recording of the
Gymnopédies, another approach suggested itself. Pianists
like Jean-Joël Barbier emphasized the soft,
lyrical side of this music. More pop-oriented musicians were soon intrigued
by Satie, and most pegged him as a gentle Romantic. Dominique Merlet and
Jean-Pierre Armengaud have taken the dreamy approach to this repertoire
to a new extreme, at least as far as tempos are concerned. Where some pianists
strive for a spiky, disjointed style, these two seek the long line. I am
not aware of any recordings of this music that take it at such deliberate
tempos. <apparently he hasn't heard De Leeuw>
At first this struck me as being all wrong, and obviously so. But with
the repeated listening, I began to like the attention to detail that shapes
every phrase. Satie tends to repeat his chords, but so many of them have
unexpected and piquant substitution notes that they repay rehearing. In
the second theme of "Enlevé," from Trois Morceaux en
forme de poire, Merlet and Armengaud convinced this listener that Satie
was sometimes a late romantic like Fauré.
Turning from Merlet and Armengaud back to the best known Satie interpreter,
Ciccolini, proves instructive. Ciccolini made two important series of Satie
recordings for Angel (now EMI) in the 1960's and 1980s. Ciccolini, drawing
on a view of Satie as a comedian with a gentle, poetic side, delivered
interpretations that were generally brisk and light-handed, with occasional
washes of lyricism in pieces like Gymnopédies. In the first
traversal of the 4-hand music no second pianist was identified , and I
always wondered if these pieces were simply double-tracked <they were>.
When he rerecorded this music twenty years later (working with Gabriel
Tacchino in the four-hand repertoire), Ciccolini began to slow down in
the prettier passages of these predominantly exuberant performances. Thus
to a certain extent, Armengaud and Merlet are carrying forward a trend
in Satie music performances, one of dwelling more on the beauties hidden
in the interstices of the music. They even resemble Ciccolini in sharp
contrasts between affects and moods in this music. And yet they have some
surprises up their sleeves; their version of En Habit de cheval,
at 5:10, is considerably shorter than either of Ciccolini's. In general,
then, these are pretty idiosyncratic performances. You might prefer something
more in the mainstream, like the Guy Campion and Mario
Vachon set favorably reviewed in these pages last year.
The sound on this disc is very live, bringing out the beauty of the lyrical
passages but resulting in some very loud crashes, especially in Trois
Morceaux en forme de poire. This may partially be due to two very bright-toned
Steinways, but I suspect miking has something to do with it as well. Since
I hate adjusting my volume dial, this bothered me at times. The box this
disc comes in is attractive but the program booklet is frustrating. The
original French notes are passable, but the English translation, as so
often happens, is abysmal…. You either like Satie played slowly or you
do not. To my surprise, I do. This new disc will not replace the favorites
in my collection, but I will keep it around anyway, partly as an object
of curiosity. I recommend it only cautiously, and not to everyone.
American Record Guide Jul/Aug 96,
Steve Schwartz:
(Reviews Mandala 4882, Music for Piano 4-Hands, a.k.a.
Complete Works for Piano Duet)
This disc contains all of Satie's music for piano duet. Armengaud has written
a fairly well-received book on the composer, Les plus que breves
d'Erik Satie. From a technical point of view, Merlet and Armengaud
play superbly. They attack together in music which exposes the attack,
they clarify all the lines, they keep the rhythms and the ornaments crisp.
This is playing of great refinement, and the engineers have captured it
well.
Unfortunately, Merlet and Armengaud also hold a view of Satie's music I
don't share. They see him as refined, witty, and ascetic, with an underlying
sadness. That's fine. However, for me, Satie, especially in most of the
music here, is also a great deal of fun. I miss that in these performances.
There's wit in their account, but it's wit without pleasure. The music
proceeds with relentless good taste. Satie flirts with low taste as a regularly
recurring feature of his style: popular dances (cafe waltzes, polkas, even
Irving Berlin ragtime in Parade and the Trois petites pieces
montees), sendups of fugues, and brass-band marches, as well as rude
tromps through musical reveries and, conversely, breaking off high spirits
for muted regrets. With the exception of Socrate, the Messe des
pauvres, and the Rosicrucian pieces, Satie usually caroms between these
two moods. His joy in the world stands off a bit, somewhat voyeuristically,
tempered by the melancholy of its short life. On the other hand, his sense
of the ridiculous keeps him from wallowing.
Consequently, the performers' accounts come off as a mixed bag. In the
quieter parts of Trois morceaux (which consists of seven sections,
by the way) and in the first movement of Trois pieces montees, they
do just fine. The end of Parade is beautiful. On the other hand,
the "Coin de polka" of Trois pieces and the "Ragtime
du paquebot" of Parade sound like Clementi - pleasant, agreeable,
but a bit sedate. En habit de cheval's opening chords come over
as merely tasteful - like Queen Victoria expressing personal displeasure
- rather than the jabs or grotesque grimaces I want from the music. Wyneke
Jordans and Leo van Doeselaar's account of the same repertoire on Etcetera
1015 is not nearly as well-played or recorded as this, but I think it comes
much closer to the spirit of Satie.
Comments from discussion
group:
The 5 CD set is of note, at the very least, for including what it
says are the first recordings of Petite Sonate, Nocturne no 6,
Versets Laïques et Somptueux.
(email from Andrew F. Wilson)
Here's the list of songs on the four solo albums in the Armegaud set:
3 "Chapitres tournes en tous sens"
"Cinema (entr'acte de Relache)"
3 "Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois"
3 "Descriptions automatiques"
3 "Embryons desseches"
3 "Enfantillages pittoresques"
3 "Gnossiennes"
3 "Gymnopedies"
3 "Heures seculaires et instantanees"
"Jack in the box"
"Je te veux"
"La belle excentrique"
"Le Picadilly"
"Le piege de Meduse" * "Le poisson reveur"
"Les pantins dansent"
3 "Menus propos enfantins"
4 "Ogives"
3 "Peccadilles importunes"
"Poudre d'or"
3 "Reveries de l'enfance
de Pantagruel"
3 "Sonneries de la Rose-Croix" *20 "Sports et divertissements"
"Tendrement"
"Versets laiques et somptueux"
3 "Vieux sequins et vieilles cuirasses"
Allegro
Dances "Gothique"
Fantaisie Valse
Minuet #1 * 6 Nocturnes
Passacaille
3 Pieces "Avant-dernieres"
3 Pieces "froides: air a faire fuir"
3 Pieces "froides: danses de travers"
3 Pieces "Nouvelles" froides
Prelude "de la Porte Heroique du Ciel"
Prelude "en tapisserie"
4 Preludes
3 Preludes "Le Fils des etoiles"
3 Preludes flasques "Veritables" (pour un chien) * 3 Preludes
flasques (pour un chien)
3 Sarabandes
Sonata "Petite"
Sonatine "bureaucratique"
Waltz ballet
3 Waltzes "distinguees du precieux degoute"
Circe 87108/11 (This is the same as the 4 2-hand CD's on Mandala 4821.25)