Michel Legrand is an eclectic, Quincy Jones sort of guy, maker of pop music, filmscores, jazz. He's intermittently played with Miles Davis over a 30 year period. I'm not surprised that he chose Erik Satie for his first classical album, but I am a little surprised that he received such glowing reviews for his first classical effort.

Gramophone Dec 93, Christopher Headington:

Satie is a composer who defies description. His piano music has the same quirky originality as his life and his love of flying in the face of convention are crystallized in these fascinating miniatures. As a musician who has released over 100 albums and whose many film scores include "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", Legrand needs little introduction, but this seems to be his debut as a solo pianist in classical repertoire, and his arrival is welcome. He is not just an adroit pianist but also a sensitive one, with the kind of tonal control that needs a fine ear even more than deft fingers, and his response to the music is summed up in his own description of discovering "things that overwhelmed me, they were so beautiful, so profound, so funny, so irritating and so boring ... altogether fascinating."

This enthusiasm comes across in vividly recorded performances that are a shade larger than life but none the worse for that. The first Gymnopédies is taken more slowly than usual but has the right hushed tenderness, while the Sonatine bureaucratique that follows has all the bustle of a Parisian Office in a Feydeau farce. From this you may deduce that Legrand separates the Gymnopédies, understandably perhaps, since they are so alike. They come on tracks 1, 5 and 27 of a total of 49. Tracks 6 to 26 are taken up with the 21 Sports et Divertissements, the longest of which lasts a mere 74 seconds and the shortest just 14. Bitty though they are, they are enjoyable, for Legrand unfailingly conveys their varied wit and their derivation from popular songs. The beautifully written manuscript score of one of them, "Le Water-Chute", is reproduced as a page of the booklet, and in color - evidently Satie used manuscript paper with the staves drawn in red. This issue is a model of presentation, with excellent notes by Ornella Volta, the head of the Satie archive. It deserves much success.

Legrand is not a hugely revered figure in the jazz world, probably because of his unholy, overly polished popular music. This 1958 record is intriguing if only because of the who's who list of jazz legends who played on it. I want to hear it. Legrand was a player and orchestrator on one of Miles Davis' last albums, "Dingo" from 1991.

Audio, Jan 94, John Sunier review of Satie CD:

What Legrand achieves is not only clairity but a flow and a sort of lilt that make any other recorded versions of these little pieces sound stiff and often pedantic … Legrand gives us an altogether fresh and engaging view of this eccentric composer.

Fanfare, Jan/Feb 94, William Zagorski :

A lot of time has passed since Aldo Ciccolini's pioneering Satie integrale on Angel Records. In the interim he has had a second go at it, and a host of pianists have made worthy and superceding contributions to the discography. Among them I count Gabriel Tacchino on Pierre Verany, Anne Queffélec on Virgin Classics, and, most recently (and most satisfyingly) Joanna MacGregor on Collins Classics. To be expected, no one pianist gives a completely satisfying account of all the music on their respective releases. Tacchino is best at the humorous pieces. He delivers find accounts of Sports et Divertissements and the Sonatine bureaucratique, but is less effective in the quieter, more ruminative pieces like the Gymnopédies and the Gnossiennes which suffer from too much rubato, as if he doesn't quite trust the music's ability to get on by itself. Anne Queffélec has the same kind of difficulty - tendency to let rubato and breath-pauses break up the natural flow of the quieter pieces. Her impish humor, however, makes something quite special from Préludes flasques (pour un chien), Sonatine bureaucratique, and Embryons desséchés, and her rhythmic verve makes Le Piccadilly infectious.

The most completely satisfying Satie pianist to date has been France Clidat on Forlane. She attacks this literature from a Debussy/Ravel tradition and effectively balances Satie's aphoristic humor, calculated gaucherie, and stylistic elegance eclecticism against the demands of "traditional" pianism. Of all the pianists cited, she is the only one who is able to float a truly atmospheric pianissimo where called for, as in the "Le Pêche" section of Sports et Divertissements. Joanna MacGregor comes very close to Clidat's brand of coloristic subtlety in her beautifully played and characterized collection on Collins Classics. I remove Clidat's collection from the running, however, partially because its 1982 analog sound occasionally shows its age, and because it is an three-disc integrale, making it noncompetitive with the single-disc collections cited above and with the offering under discussion.

Michel Legrand's collection presents a largely a-traditional and fresh view of the music. A respected jazz pianist who has, on occasion, gravitated to the world of pop, he has performed with such greats as Miles Davis, Bill Evans, and John Coltrane. This is his first go-around in this repertoire. He has selected a Steinway piano with a bright upper register and has generally eschewed pedaling in the interest of clarity. Erato's recording is, appropriately, close-up and dry. As a result, one will not find the rapt ecstasy given to the opening "Chorale unappetissant" of Sports et divertissments by Joanna MacGregor, or the impressionistic featheriness imparted to "Le Pêche" from that same work by France Clidat. Legrand is content to illuminate each note as clearly as possible and let the affect fall where it may - and, indeed, if often falls into place with telling effect. His "Unappetising Chorale" is just that - hard to swallow; his "La Balancoire" is hypnotic; his "La Chasse" is the only one I have ever heard that registers the joke at the very end - the final chords are rifle shots; "La Comédie Italienne" is funny in a depressing way; "La Reveil de la Mariée" is hilarious, "Le Tango" is, for once, a real tango (Astor Piazolla would have smiled); "Les Quatre-Coins" is eerily otherworldly - and so it goes. Legrand registers all of these characterizations vividly, and virtually by touch alone. My only criticism is that his tempos, throughout the suite, are fast and not differentiated enough. I come away from the performance breathless, but smiling. The same criticism can be lodged against his Sonatine bureaucratique. In it he lives dangerously by pushing the envelope of his well-developed technique. This provides a hair-raising trip through the score, but denudes a bit of its droll charm. In that respect he is bettered by both Queffélec and Tacchino.

The high points of his recital (and there are many) include his wonderfully slow and rapt realizations of the Gymnopédies - metrically even, intentionally underinflected, and in effect, hypnotic; "Profondeur" from the Six Piéces de la période 1906-1913 where he gives a truly pretentious performance that captures the underlying sarcastic humor of he piece; the Deux rêveries noctunes where his metrical precision renders far more shape, and, in the end, expressiveness, to those pieces than does Clidat; the whole Chapitres tournés en tous sens where his powers of characterization are at their highest, and are aided by more differential tempos than found in Sports et Divertissements - ditto, all of the Avant-dernières pensées, and lustily French Jack in the Box .

I find this collection a remarkable and telling counterbalance to the fine effort of Joanna MacGregor. Legrand is a significant Satie pianist who brings fresh insights to these scores, and who is, unlike so many others, able to communicate the boredom occasionally requested by Satie…. though always via vibrant and exciting playing.

Here's a Bio from Baseline's Encyclopedia of Film:

Born: 1932, Paris, France
Education: Paris Conservatoire

Legrand worked as a piano accompanist for singers including Juliette Greco and Bing Crosby and enjoyed success as a composer and singer of popular music before turning his attention to the screen in the mid-1950s. His richly melodic work graced the early films of New Wave directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda and he has subsequently worked with international figures including Norman Jewison, Joseph Losey, Kon Ichikawa, and Orson Welles. Legrand has also enjoyed a long and fruitful association with fellow-countryman Jacques Demy. He made his feature directing debut with "Five Days In June" (1989), an autobiographical drama set against the Normandy landings.

Comments:

If I must mention something that really aroused my interest in later years it would be Michel Legrand on ERATO. I would not dream of trying to play like him - some pieces he destroys completely. But now and then there is something undefinable that makes me listen.... Could it be so because here a composer is playing another composer - and both have something common in popular music?
-OH

Thanks to Chris Marker Site for Legrand pic.