Vexations Revisited

Grazyna Bienkowski

When Off-Record contacted Grazyna Bienkowski to participate in the Erik Satie's Vexations Series, she was immediately interested. Erik Satie is a composer whom she loves very much and has often performed as a pianist. However, she had never looked into this short piece to play 840x in a row. The unusual idea of Alain Lefebvre (Off-Record label) and Wataru Iwata to interpret Vexations freely but under the instructions of 40 performances immediately appealed to her as a pianist, but especially as a composer. The first directive she imposed on herself was to respect the essence of the score as much as possible. Despite the constraint of repetition, there were multiple possibilities to play with the writing. It opened up the composition space by touching different musical universes. Which was a real playground for various musical influences ranging from baroque to jazz. This allows an unwinding of the executions with more relief. In terms of the instrumentation used, the piano remains central in a completely traditional game but with a touch of modernity brought to it thanks to the post-production tools in the studio.

Price: $29.98