Originally released by Canada's Orion label in 1974, this recording is part of a series of Orion LPs reissued on CD by the Marquis label. They're billed as audiophile recordings. Some have been anything but audiophile, but this one captured a pair of guitars clearly even if with a bit of a thudding effect. The best news here is that this is a worthy historical document. As
Erik Satie's music has grown in popularity it has been transcribed for various instruments, but in 1974 he was considered something of a crank, a little hiccup in the march of music toward glorious Modernity. The arrangements are by one of the two guitarists,
Peter Kraus, and he was apparently (to judge from the notes, which seem to be the originals) feeling his way with no models to guide him. Bearing that in mind, he did quite well. Playing all this music on two guitars necessarily obscures some of
Satie's wit, and there's a certain sameness to the program as a whole. The players seem to realize this and to try to combat it by breaking up the Gnossiennes and the Sarabandes into non-contiguous groups. But the arrangements show a basic sensitivity to the odd mix of the quirky and the antique in
Satie's music (the booklet quotation of
Debussy's characterization of
Satie as "a medieval and sweet composer who strayed into this century" is apt), and the players effectively shift gears between the poles of archly abstract humor in the Nouvelles pièces froides (New Cold Pieces, track 2) and neo-Renaissance calm (the pair of Ogives [the term denotes the curve of a Gothic arch and also, charmingly, a nuclear warhead], track 9). Recommended for the growing ranks of
Satie enthusiasts.