It is on no lesser instrument than the 1881 Érard which had belonged to Cosima Wagner that Nicolas Horvath delivers this third volume of Satie's complete piano works. Of course, one dreads to think what Cosima might have made of music as un-Wagnerian (and even un-Lisztian... although... the later Liszt...) as this, but still. Notwithstanding a few global discographic firsts – because, as ever with Satie, there are always a few forgotten pearls – Horvath gives us the first recording in the revised version of the new Salabert edition of several pieces, including the most intriguing Christian ballet in three tableaux, or uspud (without a capital letter in the manuscript). This uspud from the mid-1890s, which might have been written for the piano or the harmonium, still belongs to Satie's more or less mystical period, as it came before he took up his habit of giving his works deliberately provocative titles such as Embryons desséchés ("Desiccated embryos") among other, equally poetic, examples. The album also includes several pieces of the stature of Gnossiennes; all in all it covers the period 1893 to 1897 – with a "summary" version of Vexations, as in its complete version – 840 repetitions in a row of the same quasi-serial microcell – the piece runs for between ten and twenty hours, depending on the tempo, and is only of limited discographic interest. Note that the pieces recorded here range from "slow" to "very slow", and the real goers get up to "very moderate": this is very much Satie in contemplative mood. © SM/Qobuz