Proms Chamber Music 3: 1.08.16 - A Satie cabaret

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

13:00 Monday 1 Aug 2016
Cadogan Hall

Alistair McGowan, actor
Jean Delescluse, singer
Alexandre Tharaud, piano

French pianist Alexandre Tharaud leads a cabaret of music and words celebrating one of the most curious and innovative composers of the 20th century.

He is joined by actor and impressionist Alistair McGowan (author of both a radio play and a documentary inspired by the composer) for a lunchtime foray featuring extracts from Satie's witty Memoirs of an Amnesiac.

Along the way we discover more about the composer of the solo-piano Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies: a committed eccentric who embraced Surrealism, invented the term 'furniture music' (later to become 'ambient music'), frequented Montmartre's bohemian Le Chat Noir cabaret club, became seduced by an esoteric strain of mystical Catholicism and for a period ate only food that was white in colour.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07m58xc

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

"Ambient music" again.

[bluestateprommer]

Satie's original term was musique d'ameublement, which sounds better in French anyway .

That aside, given the general lack of traffic in the PCM threads, I listened to PCM 3 on iPlayer so that the rest of you don't have to . (If you don't want to, that is.) I archived the musical selections on the Forum Calendar entry for PCM 3. (Yes, I will make you go to that entry and look at it.) Interestingly, all but one were first performances at The Proms.

To be honest, this one is definitely in the "Satie for Beginners" or "Erik Satie 101" mold. Lots of talk (natch) from Alastair McGowan as Satie, with some repetitions of passages that didn't necessarily get better on repetition. He did get into the part well, though, to give him credit, as AM is certainly a pro for having devised this show and performed it, apparently, multiple times. If nothing else, he did convey well why Satie must have been a pill to live with and be around, as a person. Jean Delescluse was good in the vocal selections, with a bit of acting camp here and there. Petroc's intro was on his more OTT side, but he kept it relatively short to cede the spotlight to AM. So this one was rather a one-off, in many ways.