This second volume of Erik Satie’s complete solo piano music using Satie scholar Robert Orledge’s new Salabert Edition is devoted almost entirely to the enigmatic Le Fils des étoiles. Composed as incidental music for a play set in 3000BC, and announced as having ‘an admirably oriental character’, this is one of Satie’s longest scores and rarely heard complete. At its première the work, which comprises short juxtaposed sections as well as an attractive Gnossienne towards the end of Act I, ‘was met by an icy silence’!

This recording was made on a period instrument: Cosima Wagner’s Erard, model 55613 (1881)