Three Pieces In The Shape Of A Pear [Erik Satie]

Alistair McGowan

(5 stars; 2 reviews)

The Unsent Letters Of Erik Satie Released On: 13 Jul 2013 Alistair McGowan travels to Paris on the trail of his musical hero, the visionary Erik Satie - now most well-known as the composer of the Gymnopedies. Satie was famously eccentric - he replaced traditional musical directions like 'ralentando' and 'fortissimo' with instructions to the musician such as, 'While watching oneself approach' and 'like a nightingale with a toothache' and in order to save time deciding what to wear every day, he bought seven, identical, yellow, corduroy suits - one for every day of the week. Satie's radical new approach to music was initially dismissed by the musical establishment, but he was to prove a highly influential force in the new French music of Debussy, Ravel and anticipated 20th century minimalism. As Alistair talks to Satie biographers and musicians, he uncovers the story of Satie's one and only love affair, with the artist Suzanne Valadon. Their affair lasted only six months, but years later, after Satie's death, bundles of unsent letters to Suzanne were discovered in Satie's apartment. Featuring interviews with Robert Orledge, Ornella Volta and Jean-Pierre Armengaud. Translations of Ornella Volta's interviews were voiced by Philippa Stanton Produced by Emma Harding FURTHER READING: Satie Seen Through His Letters, edited by Ornella Volta, translated by Michael Bullock. Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd; New edition (May 1994) Satie the Composer by Robert Orledge. Cambridge University Press (4 Dec 2008) Three Pieces In The Shape Of A Pear [Erik Satie] Alistair McGowan's witty and poignant new drama about his musical hero - the visionary and eccentric French composer Erik Satie and the three key relationships in his life. Starring Alistair McGowan as Erik Satie, Nathaniel Parker as Claude Debussy, Imogen Stubbs as Suzanne Valadon and Charlotte Page as Paulette Darty. Satie is now most famous for his delicate and dreamlike 'Gymnopedies', but he was a man ahead of his time - turning his back on the musical conventions of his day and composing spare, 'white' pieces with strange titles, such as 'Flabby Preludes for a Dog' and 'Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear' But he was also a complex and solitary man. McGowan's drama looks at three key figures in Satie's life - his friend and rival, Claude Debussy; his first love, the artist Suzanne Valadon and the society soprano, Paulette Darty, for whom he nurtured a long, but undeclared, devotion. But despite the poignancy of Satie's romantic life, this is a fresh and funny portrayal of an engagingly eccentric figure - a man who saved time deciding what to wear by buying seven, identical, yellow, corduroy suits (one for every day of the week) and who, for a time, consumed only white foods in the hope of instilling that simplicity and purity into his own body and music. All other parts played by members of the company. Directed by Emma Harding First broadcast: Monday 15 July 2013 Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No.1 YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU Clair de lune (Debussy) YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.