Rene Clair's 1924 movie Entr'acte begins with an elegant gentleman firing a cannon off a roof; that gentleman is the French composer Erik Satie. The film, a surrealist romp that also includes Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, offers a glimpse into Satie's world. Considered, rightly, an outsider for most of his composing career (which spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries), Satie followed no trends, and didn't look to start any of his own. His reputation rests largely on a relatively small group of solo piano pieces, which prove the old American adage "'tis a gift to be simple." The most famous of his works are the "Trois Gymnopedies," either in their original piano form or in the orchestrated versions (by Debussy and other admirers) of Gymnopedies #1 and #3. But there is much more to Satie than these familiar pieces (familiar even to many who've never heard his name), and French pianist Alexandre Tharaud 2-CD set tries to give us a more complete view of this elegant yet madcap composer. When not firing cannons for no apparent reason, he was affixing strange and witty titles to his small, distilled compositions. "Dessicated Embryos" and "Three Pieces in… read more »