Satie: Satie amoureux

We know Satie as a loner, but it is less well known that he was once extremely in love. He had a brief and stormy affair with the painter Suzanne Valadon. The portrait she made of him adorns the cover of this album, which the pianist Guillaume Coppola conceived as an intimate portrait of the composer – “one that is shrouded in a veil of modesty or provocation and lies between antique and oriental inspiration, mystical phases, humor and cabaret”. The miniature “Bonjour Biqui” and the motif from the “Vexations” contain rare allusions to Valadon and act like commas between these chapters, just like “Désespoir agréable”, whose title alone seems to summarize Satie’s life and work. This homage is released on the centennial of Satie’s death; in addition to the famous “Gymnopédies” and “Gnossiennes”, the album also contains rare and seldom-recorded discoveries that bear witness to the diversity of the work created by the idiosyncratic Satie.