Pascal Rogé, Jean-Philippe Collard - Satie: The Four Handed Piano (2000)

In the music of Erik Satie, the sublime and the ridiculous reside in such tantalizingly close proximity that it's useless to try to separate them--which may, after all, be the point. For example, what can one say about 'Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear' other than there are really seven of them and regardless what fruit they may sound or look like they comprise a set of dances as disarming as any in piano literature? Fortunately, the case is well made in the performances of Pascal Rogé and Jean-Philippe Collard, who bring just the right balance of lightness and weight, wit, and beauty and plainness to the music. The four-handed piano arrangement of the surreal ballet 'Parade' lacks the sirens, gunshots and typewriters of the more familiar orchestral version, but retains its quirky mixture of vaudeville and proto-minimalism to winning effect; and the "serious fantasy" of 'The Eccentric Beauty' is Satie at his most uproarious, linking childish etudes, waltzes and can-cans with a comical series of music-hall vamps.