The Very Best of Satie

The buyer of a best-of compilation may often be looking for a single disc if the idea is to get a taste of a certain composer, but the sheer individuality of Satie's music emerges more clearly in multiple examples; the buyer should consider this reasonably priced double-disc set from Naxos. The performances, mostly by pianist Klára Körmendi and the fine regional French Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy, are never less than competent, and the buyer will get a full sense of the range of Satie's iconoclastic ways. The composer's hits -- the graceful Gymnopédie No. 1, the offbeat Sports et Divertissements in their entirety, the Trois morceaux en forme de poire (Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear, composed after a critic complained of formlessness in Satie's music), excerpts from the avant-garde stage music of the allet Parade -- are all here, but the listener gets alternative examples of the impulses behind these. The allet Relâche, a Dadaist-inspired work that mixes popular tunes with avant-garde experimentalism, is represented by two excerpts; it's a work on the way up. Satie's humor is a bit easier to connect with when one encounters him taking aim at musical convention from several slightly different angles. A bonus here, not usually found on Satie compilation recordings, is the inclusion of several of Satie's semi-popular music-hall pieces. It might have been nice to include the vocal version of Je te veux (CD 2, track 14), but the piece helps the listener come to grips with the layer of vernacular music in the work of this solitary French iconoclast, who seems with every passing year to have more to say to the modern listener. Anyone who wants to understand Satie can get a good start with this generous set of pieces. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide