Cage Meets Satie Jay Gottlieb & Anne de Fornel

• Erik Satie (1866 - 1925) & John Cage (1912 - 1992): Three Dances pour deux pianos préparés:
• 1 Three Dances pour deux pianos préparés: Dance 1 06:16
• 2 Three Dances pour deux pianos préparés: Dance 2 06:42
• 3 Three Dances pour deux pianos préparés: Dance 3 09:29
• Experiences:
• 4 Experiences No. 1 pour deux pianos 03:37
• Socrate pour deux pianos, drame symphonique en trois parties, Part I:
• 5 Socrate pour deux pianos, drame symphonique en trois parties, Part I: Portrait de Socrates (Le Banquet) 06:06
• 6 Socrate pour deux pianos, drame symphonique en trois parties, Part II: Bords de I'llissus (Phèdre) 06:36
• 7 Socrate pour deux pianos, drame symphonique en trois parties, Part III: Mort de Socrates (Phédon) 17:07
• Total Runtime 55:53

Info for Cage Meets Satie

If there is one composer that John Cage admired throughout his career, it is Erik Satie. He was instrumental in promoting the music of the French composer in the United States. The first event he organized took place during the summer session of Black Mountain College (North Carolina) in 1948: twenty‐five concerts were dedicated to Satie’s music. Places varied: he sometimes chose the grand piano in the dining room and on other occasions, the upright piano in his bungalow whose open windows allowed the public sitting on the grass to listen to the music. The highlight of this festival was the performance on August 14, 1948 of the lyric comedy Le Piège de Méduse (1913). The composer often preceded the concerts with a short lecture, one of the most significant entitled “Defense of Satie”.

During his stay in Paris in 1949, Cage continued his research on Satie’s music by studying his manuscripts, some of which Darius Milhaud had deposited at the Paris Conservatory in 1939. He was delighted to attend a private concert with Suzanne Tézenas during which the Swiss tenor Hugues Cuénod sang Socrate and likewise to meet Jean Mollet who knew the French composer. In the capital, he also visited Henri Sauguet in June 1949, who offered him two manuscripts of furniture music for small ensembles; it was in this context that he discovered the manuscript of Vexations for solo piano (1892‐1893). To his great regret, having promised it to critic Claude Rostand, Sauguet could not give it to him.

However, Cage was allowed to take a picture of it which he published in Contrepoints n° 6 in 1949. In September 1963, he organized the first performance of this work at the Pocket Theatre in New York. For eighteen hours and forty minutes, ten pianists (including the composer) took turns playing every twenty minutes, with no interruption.

Throughout his life, Cage remained faithful to him, expressing his attachment in these terms: “Perhaps I can be blamed for my devotion to Satie. But I can never give it up… If my ideas get confused, I owe this confusion to love”.

Jay Gottlieb, piano
Anne de Fornel, piano

Jay Gottlieb
was born in New York, where he was an honors graduate of the High School of Performing Arts while simultaneously studying at the Juilliard School. He received a Master of Arts degree from Harvard University, where he performed and organized concerts and taught piano, composition and harmony.

He worked closely for many years in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, as well as with pianists Robert Casadesus, Yvonne Loriod and Aloys Kontarsky, and composers Lukas Foss, Stefan Wolpe, Olivier Messiaen, Maurice Ohana, Georges Aperghis, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Sylvano Bussotti, John Cage, George Crumb, György Ligeti, Betsy Jolas, Oliver Knussen, Giacinto Scelsi, Ralph Shapey.

JAY GOTTLIEB is a Laureat of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation. He has received a Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation Grant, National Endowment for the Arts Grant, Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize, French Government Grant, First Prize in the International Improvisation Competition in Lyons, the Festival Estival de France Prize, and the Master Award for Excellence in Performance at the Berkshire Music Festival, Tanglewood.

He has taken part in such music festivals as Berlin, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Cologne, Rome, Milan, Turin, the Biennale of Venice, Amsterdam, Aldeburgh, Almeida (London), Huddersfield, Extasis (Geneva), Zurich, Madrid, Seville, Autumn Festival in Warsaw, Autumn Festival in Paris, La Roque d’Anthéron, Musica in Strasburg, Octobre en Normandie, Manca in Nice, Avignon, Les Musiques in Marseille, Piano aux Jacobins in Toulouse, Piano(s) Festival in Lille, La Folle Journée in Nantes, Orléans, Bourges, Metz, Nancy, Moscow Forum, International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, Tanglewood Festival, Montreal, Macao, among many others.

JAY GOTTLIEB has appeared as soloist in the United States with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, members of the New York Philharmonic, National Music Week Symphony, Pierre Monteux Domain Orchestra, and the Group for Contemporary Music in New York, in China with the National Symphony of China, in Great Britain with the London Sinfonietta, in Switzerland with the Orchestre du Rhin; in Germany with the Hessicher Rundfunk Orchestra, in Italy with the Orchestra della R.A.I., in France with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, L’Orchestre Symphonique d’Europe, L’Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, the Polish National Radio Orchestra, members of the Orchestre de Paris, and with various French ensembles including Musique Vivante, Ars Nova, Itinéraire, Alternance, 2e2m, Denojours, the Percussions de Strasbourg, the Contemporary Chorus, Musicatreize, Accentus. He has worked with such conductors as Pierre Boulez, Seiji Ozawa, Kent Nagano, Michael Tilson Thomas, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, Gunther Schuller, Robert Craft, Gilbert Amy, Arturo Tamayo, Paul Méfano, Diego Masson, Michel Plasson, Pascal Rophé, Ronald Zollman and Laurence Equilbey.

JAY GOTTLIEB has concertized extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, Asia and Africa and has made numerous appearances on major radio and television stations. He has produced several series of broadcasts for France-Musique and France-Culture devoted entirely to American music. He continues to give lectures, lecture-concerts and master classes on multiple aspects of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, including at the Paris Conservatory, where he is also regularly invited to serve as a jury member for their Piano Examinations, Music School of Indiana University in Bloomington, Juilliard School, International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, Ecole Normale and Schola Cantorum in Paris, American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, Pianale Academy-Festival in Germany. ...

Anne de Fornel
Born in 1984 (Paris), Anne de Fornel devotes her talents to complementary musical fields: as pianist, member of the Trio Steuermann, artistic director of the Ensemble Mesostics and musicologist. In 2006 she received her final diploma (DEM) from the Regional Conservatory of Paris (class of Olivier Gardon), sole first prize unanimously awarded with highest honours; the following year she obtained a Master’s Degree with highest honours in musicology from the University of Paris-Sorbonne.

Anne de Fornel has completed her Masters Degree in piano with Florent Boffard and Svetlana Eganian at the National Superior Conservatory of Music and Dance of Lyon. Laureate of a numberof national and international piano competitions.

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