Cover painting by David Wilcox, after Picasso's design for curtain of original Paris production of Parade.

See the Darius Milhaud notes written for these recordings.


High Performance Review, Spring 92, Bert Wechsler:

It's not easy to play the music of Satie satisfactorily. Abravanel knows how.

Recommended in Bill Nelson article.

1975 Penguin Guide :

A collection of Satie's orchestral music including various orchestrations made by friends and disciples is very welcome. Abravanel, an inveterate searcher after new material on record, fails to throw off some of the more pointed pieces, such as Jack in the Box, with quite the lightness required, but these are enjoyable performances, well recorded.

1990 Penguin Guide :

A generous bargain collection of Satie's orchestral music, well played and given a full, vivid recording from the beginning of the 1970's. The Utah Symphony Orchestra made a number of adventurous excursions into European repertoire at that time and, if Abravanel fails to throw off some of the more pointed music with a fully idiomatic lightness of touch, these are still enjoyable performances; the ballet scores have plenty of color and rhythmic life.

Turok's Choice, Issue 17, November 1991:

An attractive reissue features excellent performances of Satie's three major ballet scores ("Parade," "Mercure," "Relache") and other works, by Abravanel and the Utah Symphony (OVC 4030, analog). Good sound.

Dear Dick
You may find the following review of Abravanel, Rosenthal, Ciccolini and Glazer of interest, especially if, like me, you also enjoy the music of Michael Nyman.
regards,
Andrew

New Statesman, 2 October 1970, Michael Nyman:
"Satiety"

Satie's music needs Boles more than it needs Maurice Abravanel and the Utah Symphony Orchestra, whose well-intentioned two volumes are valuable in that they include the three ballets and six orchestrations of piano pieces.
The Utah sound is flashy and boisterous, plugging the beefy at the expense of the refined - as though Satie had been composer-in-residence at the Follies and not the Chat Noir. Mucky rather than filthy, though. The orchestrations have a curiosity interest in excess of their true value. Debussy's arrangements of two of the Gymnopédies, for example, demonstrate - by default - the fierce purity of the almost colorless tunes and accompaniments which are only weakened, if not destroyed, by conventional multicolored soft-padded arrangements.

Nyman goes on to review the Rosenthal orchestral recordings now reissued on Adés, and compares the piano recordings of Ciccolini and Glazer.




Gramophone May 92, Christopher Headington:

Nietzche said that "revolutions come on the feet of doves." We learn this from the useful booklet here, which has an introductory essay written by a founder member of Les Six, Darius Milhaud. He argues that in an obtrusive way, "Satie's influence defined an aesthetic, and did so for several generations", while not accepting that, I would certainly agree with Ravel, who valued his influence while not regarding him as a master.

Satie's piano music has had good coverage on disc recently, but enthusiasts will welcome back to the catalogue this collection of orchestral works (in three caes orchestrated by other hands), although the performances are by no means new and the recording is over-reverberant. The quality of spontaneity in the playing is sometimes attractive but does not always convince me, for in places I feel that this is more like a cheerful play-through than a carefully polished performance - though that is arguably not a bad thing in this composer to whom anything like a highly professional routine was surely anathema. The special effects of lottery wheels, sirens, typewriters and pistol shots in Parade are done with gusto and the typewriter comes compete with a bell on its carriage return. But for me at least, the music of this Cocteau <Picabia> ballet written for Diaghilev in 1916, has an "anything goes", two-bars-at-a-time kind of invention which is more chic than clever - but there again, that is its nature and others find it more satisfying. (But not André Gide, who commented on its poverty-stricken pretentiousness.)

The seven remaining works on the disc make up the usual kind of Satie compilation of odds and ends - for example, we have just the first and third of the three Gymnopédies because those are the ones that Debussy happens to have orchestrated, and the "Grande ritournelle" from La belle excentrique is just a fragment from a suite of dances that lasts less than two minutes. Of course certain things stand out as having more individuality, like the clean and cheery "Chasse" in the Cing grimaces and the "Bain des Grâces" in Mercure, which repeats a little rhythmic figure with some charm. But much of this programme - the tenderly played Gymnopédies are the exception - sounds all too similar and has an unsettling bittiness. For example, the 22 tracks of the surrealist <dadaist> ballet Relâche together last only 19 minutes, and there are no less than 58 tracks in all! Under Abravanel's direction this music played well enough, though here and there I wished for lighter handling, as in Milhaud's orchestration of Jack-in-the-box. I wish I could say that I found it more satisfying listening, and in making this observation I am thinking of the quality of the writings as well as its shape. For any kind of parallel to the alarmingly empty modishness that we find here (a kind of style without substance) we have to turn to Shostakovich at his most cynical - and I don't like that either! This disc is for the already converted.