Reviews

Without doubt, this is the best rendition of Erik Satie’s marathon piano piece to surface. Performed last year in Brussels by Stephane Ginsburgh on Satie’s own piano, this is beautifully recorded extract from the mammoth work is breathtaking. Listening to this in the still of the night is anything but vexating. The calm, contemplative music brings about feelings of bliss and by the end of the recording it is difficult to be annoyed about anything.

Satie’s Vexations was overlooked for many years as a joke; one musical motif played 840 times with no variation. It was only in 1963, 70 years after it was written, that John Cage organised an 18 hour 40 minute rendition of the piece. The seeming impossibility of any one man performing the whole piece was solved by having 11 pianists take it in turns to play a number of repetitions each. This recording of Vexations, as the title suggests, sees Ginsburgh perform 42 variations of the piece. His performance is clear and deliberate, obviously taking into account Satie’s sole direction as to how to play the piece: “In order to play this motif 840 times consecutively to oneself, it will be useful to prepare oneself beforehand, and in utter silence, by grave immobilities.” This could be directed at the listener too; in order to hear the piece as intended, the CD needs to be repeated 20 times (not 12 as indicated in the sleeve notes) which is over 23 hours of intense repetition (I have not tried this yet...).

Compared to Alan Marks’ recording of Vexations, this recording is superior in terms of sound quality and in performance. Ginsburgh seems less hurried and lets each note sing out with all its splendour. As I stated in my review of Marks’ performance, it is difficult to expect what will come next within each repetition of the motif as Satie made Vexations into quite a complex and unpredictable piece of music, an amazing feat considering the huge amounts of repetition required.

Also included with the CD is a comprehensive essay by Matthew Shlomowitz on the relationship between the works of Satie and those of Cage, detailing how without Cage’s interest in the piece it would have remained unknown and unappreciated. As it is an extract from a larger thesis, it is quite academic in tone but it is still a fascinating read to the layman. Overall, this is the definitive production of Satie’s Vexations until someone actually puts out the whole thing in one recording.

Erik Satie, "42 Vexations (1893)"
by John Kealy
Brainwashed (USA, 9/27/2009)

If one listens to 42 Vexations (1893) without reading about it, then it may take a while before he or she realizes it is one 80-second piano piece repeated by Stephane Ginsburg. That could the nature of our time, with the omnipresence (for those interested) of ambient music and experimental classical music, but it’s also about the piece itself, how evocative and strange it is. Written on paper by Erik Satie in 1893 but likely never intended to be performed, Vexations was turned from concept to tangible music in 1963 by John Cage and friends. They went with Satie’s actual idea to play the piece 840 times in a row.

This release, as the title indicates, consists of 42 playings, and the liner notes include a dare: “To hear the piece as it was originally designed, simply play the CD on repeat mode 12 times.” There’s nothing simple about this “limited” run through of 42 Vexations. This is enough to stun, torment, puzzle, and entrance you. The more you listen, the more it becomes both familiar and foreign and the more impressed and scared you become. Dare it be said: It’s one of the most powerful releases of the year and a joke at the same time.

42 Vexations (1893)
by Dave Heaton, Associate Music Editor
PopMatters (USA, 10/2009)

Vexations is a strange piece, of uncertain provenance and meaning. It's a simple, four-part theme for piano, with an inscription implying (though never stating explicitly) that the theme is to be performed 840 times in succession. Other instructions relating to tempo and the use of the bass are oblique, and up to the individual interpreter. Satie never published, performed, or discussed it in his lifetime; it was only brought to public attention in 1949, when John Cage published a facsimile version. In September, 1963 Cage and 11 other pianists performed it in its full marathon form, and it's been played a number of other times, including a centennial performance featuring 21 pianists, each playing for an hour. This CD, on which the piece is performed by Stephane Ginsburg, offers only five-percent of the whole -- in order to get the full 840 out of it, you'll have to play the disc 20 times. But even one journey from beginning to end will have a powerful effect on the listener. The slow, mournful repetition of these off-kilter notes that move and resonate with each other in unexpected ways creates a kind of head-spinning feeling after a while, not unlike late-period extended works by Morton Feldman (the solo piano piece For Bunita Marcus, or the piano/violin duo For John Cage, in particular). Putting this disc on in the background -- Satie described some of his other work as "furniture music," designed to unobtrusively fill the space around a listener -- will be at first fascinating, then disquieting, and finally relaxing. Of course, on another level it's interesting just that it exists, given the technology of digital recording. Ginsburg could, after all, have played the piece once and the producer could have cut-and-pasted 41 more repetitions into place. But they didn't; they played it through.

42 Vexations (1893)
by Phil Freeman
allmusic (USA, 10/2009)