• Main Performer: Pascal Rogé
• Languages of Booklet Text: English

Review

If you think the title After the Rain is silly, wait until you get to the subtitle: "The Soft Sounds of Erik Satie." Oh, well, never mind titles and subtitles: it is ultimately the music and performance that make or break the disc and, in this case, the music and performances are both superb. Satie was, of course, the utterly unclassifiable composer who wrote pieces that are easy and hard, cold and hot, ironic and sentimental, ancient and modern, sublime and mundane. Pascal Rogé is, of course, the French pianist with a virtuoso technique (which, in a French pianist, is rare), a beautiful tone (which, in a French pianist, is typical), and superb taste (which, in a French pianist, is inevitable). In this set of Gymnopedies, Gnossiennnes, Nocturnes, and other short and improbably named works, Rogé shows that tone and taste triumph over technique, that is, that Rogé plays with precisely voluptuous tone and objectively subjective taste, but wholly without drawing attention to himself. The result is one of the best Satie recordings ever made. Decca's '90s digital sound was as warm and cool as the music itself. ~ James Leonard, All Music Guide

Performances

Composer	Title	Time
Erik Satie	Gymnopédies (3), for piano (also orchestrated by Debussy)	8:09
Erik Satie	Gnossiennes (6), for piano	18:41
Erik Satie	Nocturnes (5) for piano	13:13
Erik Satie	Avant-dernières pensées (Next-to-last thoughts), pieces (3) for piano	3:42
Erik Satie	Pièces froides (Cold Pieces), pieces (6) for piano	15:24
Erik Satie	Rêveries nocturnes (2), for piano	3:20
Erik Satie	Prélude de La Porte héroïque du ciel (Prelude to "The Heroic Gate of Heaven"), incidental music for piano (or orchestra)	4:30