Composer: Erik Satie, Grażyna Bienkowski
Performer: Grażyna Bienkowski, Benoit Lavollee, Bruno Ramos
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Soond
Catalogue: SND22026
Release: 2023
Size: 144 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
01. My Lewis Caroll Version
02. Through the Crystal Silence
03. The March of the Janissaries
When Off-Record contacted Grażyna Bienkowski to participate in the Erik Satie’s Vexations Series, she was immediately interested. Erik Satie is a composer whom she love very much and have often performed as a pianist. However, she had never looked into this short piece to play 840x in a row. The unusual idea of Alain Lefebvre (Off-Record label) and Wataru Iwata to interpret Vexations freely but under the instructions of 40 performances immediately appealed to her as a pianist, but especially as a composer. The first directive she imposed on herself was to respect the essence of the score as much as possible. Despite the constraint of repetition, there were multiple possibilities to play with the writing. It opened up the composition space by touching different musical universes. Which was a real playground for various musical influences ranging from baroque to jazz. This allows an unwinding of the executions with more relief. In terms of the instrumentation used, the piano remains central in a completely traditional game but with a touch of modernity brought to it thanks to the post-production tools in the studio. She called on Benoît Lavollée on the vibraphone and marimba in the 1st movement My lewis Caroll version (vivid 20x) – and Bruno Ramos on the double bass which supports the piece as a whole. The 2nd movement Through the crystal silence (slow 10x) is the most lyrical, it is the only one that is played in a slow tempo as requested on the score by Satie. This movement is a kind of historical unfolding of musical writing. At the beginning the treatment of the theme refers to the counterpoint then slides towards a more 19th century pianistic aesthetic to end with harmonic jazz colors. The 3rd movement The March of the janissaries (vivid 10x) is a movement so called “exit. Its title, inspired by a choir from Mozart’s opera L’enlèvement au sérail, is also a nod to the moment when, judged talentless by his teachers at the Conservatory of Music and dismissed after two and a half years of lessons, Satie decided to enlist in an infantry regiment.