Erik Satie: Complete Chronological Catalogue

"I admire you: are you not the Great Stravinsky? I am but little Erik Satie." - Erik Satie, the measurer of sounds.

"You know your obsession for lists is approaching the realm of pathology when you starts to chronologize the works of Erik Satie" - This blogger, the maker of playlists.

Back in the time of CDs I used to own one Satie album, The Magic of Satie by French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Though it was one of my most played CDs, I never explored  more of his music, mainly because I thought he didn't write much else. Now, thanks to Spotify, I found that he produced more than 12 hours of music! Not including the 18-hour long Vexations.

I compiled a playlist after the chronological list on this Satie site, and included all the quality performances I could find on Spotify. The final result is a combination of no less than three dozens of Satie recordings. For the most famous piece Gymnopédies, I used a unusual interpretation by Reinbert de Leeuw, which lasts more than 16 minutes. I also included Debussy's orchestration of Gymnopédies No.1 & 3 (he thought the 2nd one did not lend itself to orchestration), and an orchestral version of Gymnopédie No.2 (it was wrongly assigned to Debussy on Naxos). Both the orchestral and piano version of Socrate are included.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Erik Satie: Complete Chronological Catalogue (302 tracks, total time: 12 hours) Press Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. Many tracks are currently unavailable on Spotify USA, still it works as a list of quality Satie recordings on Spotify.