Erik Satie

 

Dear friends of piano music,

brightly colored balloons floating in the infinity of the bright blue summer sky. It's also the perfect piece for midsummer when you don't want to achieve top athletic performance on the piano. That was how I thought until recently - then I suggested this piece to my favorite student. She didn't like to play it right now - it was too sad for her, she said. For the first time I looked in amazement at the notes - I only knew this “catchy tune” acoustically. And there is actually "Lent et douloureux". It's a bit like our wonderful old trees here in Heidelberg - many of them were planted when our district was built. They are over a hundred years old, their mighty crowns shine up to the sky (at least this is what you get when you look up through the foliage on sunny days). But they are at risk because the drought of the last few years has caused the groundwater to drop sharply and their roots can no longer draw enough water from the ground. So we have to worry, and so a great sadness always mixes with the aesthetic pleasure of seeing it.

By the way, you don't know what Satie thought about the title "Gymnopédie". It could be a kind of Greek-style nude dance. That can also be a sad thing…

Kind regards Kerstin Erik Satie: Gymnopédie https://youtu.be/ElVvRKPSMOg