Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785):
1. Sonata in F major: AndanteErik Satie (1866-1925):
2. Allegretto
3. Giga
4. Sonata in G major: Allegro ("Fife and Drums")
5. Andante
6. Allegro
7. Sonata in F major
8. Sonata in E flat major
9. Sonata in B flat major: Andante
10. Giga
11. Adagio from the Sonata in D major
12. Petite Ouverture à danserCover photo: Barry with the statue of Galuppi on the island of Burano, his birthplace, 2019.
12. Ogive No. 1
13. Ogive No. 4
14. Sarabande No. 3
15. Pièces Froides: Danses de travers (“Crossed-up Dances”) IV
16. Pièces Froides V
17. Pièces Froides VI
Listen to complete Galuppi & Satie streams here.
Program Notes:
It is one of the ironies of music history that the Baroque Venetian composer, Baldassare Galuppi, was regarded as one of the most famous composers in Europe during the 18th century, renowned for his operas and keyboard works, but quickly fell into obscurity with the rise of Romanticism, whereas Erik Satie, a hundred years later was mainly known only in Paris during his lifetime, but today is famous worldwide. Both were incredibly innovative keyboard composers living at the cusp of changing musical styles.
One of Galuppi’s keyboard sonatas, including the exquisite Andante in C major, was revived by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli on an LP in 1965 that I happened to win as a teenager in a CBC radio competition, and it has stayed with me ever since. Since then only a few pianists have recorded any of Galuppi’s more than 100 sonatas on the piano (an instrument one of them reports as being indicated on a Galuppi manuscript as “per il Pianoforte”). Galuppi must have been impressed by the sustaining power of the then new instrument, compared with the harpsichord, but paradoxically most contemporary performers play the allegro movements extremely fast, and record them in an empty concert hall. In my opinion, they work much better at a slower tempo (here recorded in our living room) that brings out individual voices, combined with the traditional Baroque keyboard ornamentation, especially on the repeats. Unlike most other pianists, I also emphasize the remarkable emotional outbursts in the scores – fuoco passages going straight to dolce – that look forward to Beethoven. There is even an amazing set of bird trills in the G major sonata Allegro that interrupt his reverie, and in the F major sonata, Allegretto, one of the climaxes turns into a Flamenco dance. Whatever the interpretation, Galuppi never fails to delight with his endlessly innovative musical ideas.
As you will remember from my previous CDs, Erik Satie has always been a favourite keyboard composer of mine. And back in the 1970s, I was inspired by Reinbert de Leeuw’s amazingly slow recordings of his early, and most popular, piano works issued on Philips, and still available on CD and YouTube. These too bring out the inner voices and unexpected harmonic changes that were Satie’s innovation. Ironically, de Leeuw performs the very strangely evocative Pièces Froides very fast, but I maintain my traditionally slower tempi as before.
So, in conclusion I hope you will enjoy the ‘encounter’ between these two amazing composers as I have interpreted them.
Enjoy!
Barry