"If Erik Satie were alive today — and what a pity he isn't—he would be just short of 105 years old and, very likely, astonished by the attention his music is getting nowadays. It is the kind and quality of the attention, I think, that would have surprised him, for he was not without a certain renown during his lifetime. But his fame, outside his own limited circle of devotees, was chiefly as a perpetrator of musical jokes and gags. For most musicians he was an eccentric not to be taken seriously, and he had no commercial success at all. He lived in poverty...." - The New York Times, 28 February 1971
When Aldo Ciccolini made his first recordings of Erik Satie's piano music in 1956 he virtually had the field to himself. It took another decade or so for the rest of the world to catch up, and since then Satie's music has become increasingly popular. Here's where it all began.
Ciccolini's playing is often sublime, and we're delighted with the sound quality achieved in these Ambient Stereo XR remasters. Ignored at the time, this is truly a milestone in the rehabilitation of one of the world's more eccentric composers.