I am feeling somber today. I have had a stream of odd dreams over the last few days from red gloves growing out of pies as they are cooked to my friend Michael and me attempting to stop an assassination attempt on Barak Obama. Dreams are odd things. I truly believe that they mean more than we give them credit for these days. I need to start writing them down as soon as I wake up so I can think about them the next morning in all their detail. You are probably asking yourself, "What does this have to do with music?"
Well, it may be a looser connection than many of my posts, but in short, these works my Erik Satie make me feel as if I am dreaming when I listen to them. They are almost painfully slow, yet beautiful and enticing. They draw out of me deep emotions, thoughts and images like dreams. I can't really explain it, yet, it utterly captivates me.
Another reason for this post has to do with classical music recordings. I truly did not understand the importance of knowing several different recordings of a piece of music. I had heard these pieces before but played at a much faster tempo. For me hearing Erik Satie's work played at this slow tempo made it come alive to me. My favorite recording of this piece is by Branka Parlic. I have posted a link to Gnossienne No. 1 (my favorite piece of the two, you should really check it out!) because the youtube poster disabled the embedding capability for that video, but not Gnossienne No. 3. So enjoy them. If you are interested you can click on the titles of each song (above) to hear the faster version I was talking about. Both versions are good, but I really love the slower ones which you can find below.
Gnossienne No. 1 (played by Branka Parlic)
Gnossienne No. 3 (played by Branka Parlic)
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