4Hands
Concerts
From Erik Satie’s four-hands piano suite, La belle excentrique, comes the Waltz of the Mysterious Kiss in the Eye. The title is typical of early 20th century French modernism. It revels in contradiction, in the absurd, in the irrational. This programme of music and film from the period brings alive the gently anti-establishment, politely iconoclastic tone of the Parisian avant-garde.
Paris in the early 20th century was one of the seminal sites of modernism. Artists, musicians, thinkers and the rest gathered in the neighbourhoods of Montmartre, the Left Bank and Montparnasse to explore and create the new world and debate its meanings. From this Bohemian milieu came some of the great names of 20th century modernism. Many (notably Picasso, Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Buñuel) were not originally French, but all took to the typically French love of discussion, humour and anti-bourgeois provocation.
Elie Fruchter and Lona Kozik combine their pianism and their love of the piano, as well as their unashamed Francophilia, to create a compelling programme of French piano music including works by Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. This music is played alongside a selection of well-known films from the period, including the work of René Clair, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp and Luis Buñuel.
A key member of the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde, Erik Satie is known equally for his absurdist humour, his delicate melodies and his extraordinary vivid musical moods. He has subsequently been claimed as a precursor of many later trends including minimalism, ambient music, postmodern sensibilities and even the Theatre of the Absurd.
Pianists Elie Fruchter and Lona Kozik present the witty, private, gently subversive work and world of France’s most unusual composer, writer and self-styled “gymnopedist”. They are joined by Sam Richards reading entries from Satie’s journals and playing a toychestra.
Enjoy the famous Gymnopédies, Gnossiennes, Parade for piano duet, the film Entr’acte and more combined with visual images to create a tapestry of the strangely beautiful, often puzzling world of Erik Satie.
“Which do you prefer – music or ham?”
