Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays Satie’s Gymnopédies

Slanting and shadow-cutting a flickering eddy

Trickled in gusts of gold on the shiny flagstone

Where the atoms of amber in the fire mirroring themselves

Mingled their sarabande with the gymnopaedia

From “The Ancients”, J.P. Contamine de Latour’s poem that inspired The Gymnopédies.

A couple of years ago, I was having dinner with Jean-Yves Thibaudet and I was trying to avoid the usual, tired all questions that people probably ask someone like him all the time. And yet, I had to ask, of all the composers he regularly played, to whom did he feel the most emotionally connected? Without hesitation, without pause, he said Satie. I was somewhat surprised because it is true that he is best known for his interpretations of Satie but he is also known for his on stage histrionics (Vivienne Westwood designs all the suits he wears during performances, for instance and she is not exactly the epitome of restrain or mellow aesthetics).

I’ve been listening to him play Satie practically all morning. This music is such a great soundtrack for my moments of ennui. And I don’t mean ennui in the sense of boredom (I am rarely, if ever, bored) but more in the sense of a languid melancholy. A kind of undefinable state where I remember the times gone by, the people I encountered, the home at the other side of the world that I once left behind, my family, friends I no longer know, the choices I made and the ones that were made for me, the animals I once cared for but who have long left this earth, the food that my grandmas cooked. The stuff that made me who I am, bundle of emotions and words and memories. And I cried a little, wishing I could hug 15 year old me and tell myself that things might not turn as planned (they rarely ever do), and yet, it is still worth trying, if anything, for the sheer pleasure of listening to Gymnopedie Nr. 3.

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