Kats-Chernin: Unsent Love Letters, Meditations On Erik Satie Tamara-Anna Cislowska

• Elena Kats-Chernin (b. 1957):
• 1 Love Token 01:24
• 2 Unsent Love Letters 04:44
• 3 Behind Your Pearls 02:35
• 4 Le Chat Noir 02:58
• 5 Threads Of Grey Velvet 01:30
• 6 Sarabande 02:25
• 7 Garden Gothique 01:55
• 8 Very Shiny 01:01
• 9 Absynthe Cocktail 03:30
• 10 The Gymnast 03:02
• 11 One Table, One Chair 01:26
• 12 Eggshell 07:30
• 13 Imaginary Building 02:02
• 14 Piano Tower 01:53
• 15 Phonometrician 05:23
• 16 Modern Romantic 02:43
• 17 Maple In The Evening 02:48
• 18 Tuesday Suit 05:00
• 19 Wonder About Yourself 01:06
• 20 Patchouli 01:22
• 21 Notebooks 02:45
• 22 Postcard To A Critic 03:02
• 23 Dance In 7/4 04:46
• 24 Biqui 03:54
• 25 Darkness 03:24
• 26 For Whom It Tolls 01:43
• Total Runtime 01:15:51

Info for Kats-Chernin: Unsent Love Letters, Meditations On Erik Satie

After the death of Erik Satie, dozens of unsent love letters were found in his Paris apartment. Now composer Elena Kats-Chernin and pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska send those letters off, in 26 meditative and passionate piano miniatures inspired by Satie’s extraordinary life and music.

The album is a musical memoir from one composer to another, from the Uzbekistan-born Australian to the French composer whose eccentricities are legendary and music timeless. “Satie’s life was a fascinating, fervoursome affair,” says pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska, “from the first strike of love and then lifelong estrangement with artist and muse Suzanne Valadon, to the unexpected celebrity and conflict of his last ten years. After he died, friends gaining access to his apartment, for the first time in almost three decades, found conditions both perplexing and romantically fastidious in their own way: two grand pianos one atop the other, one chair, one table, seven velvet suits and the love letters – many, many unsent love letters.”

The album reflects on idiosyncrasies and anecdotes from Satie’s life, with music that ranges from seductive orientalism to hypnotic melodies reminiscent of the ground-breaking, transcendent beauty of Satie’s own piano pieces: ‘imaginary building’ reflects on his sketches of imaginary buildings (which he even advertised in the newspaper for rent and purchase); ‘very shiny’, one of his characteristically opaque performance directions; ‘postcard to a critic’, after Satie’s explosive response to a negative review (leading to a spell in gaol). The buoyant rhythms and rhapsodic harmonic style that have brought Kats-Chernin a reputation as one of the best-loved composers of her generation provide the perfect lens to reflect on a musical great of the previous century.

This world-premiere recording was made in the presence of the composer, with Kats-Chernin’s own choice of pianist, the ARIA-Award-winning Tamara-Anna Cislowska, who has been described as “Australian piano gold” by BBC Music Magazine and praised for her “profoundly affecting” musicianship by Gramophone.

Tamara-Anna Cislowska, piano

Tamara-Anna Cislowska
is one of Australia’s most acclaimed and recognised pianists, and winner of the 2015 ARIA award for ‘Best Classical Album’ for her landmark recording, Peter Sculthorpe: Complete Works for Solo Piano (ABC Classics), featured as ‘Recording of the Month’ in BBC Music Magazine and Limelight Magazine. She has performed across five continents in repertoire from Scarlatti to Sculthorpe, to consistent critical and public acclaim, winning international prizes in London, Italy and Greece, including the Rovere d’Oro. In Australia she was the youngest pianist to win ABC Young Performer of the Year at age 14, recipient of the Freedman Fellowship (2003) from the Music Council of Australia and in 2012 the APRA-AMCOS Art Music Award for ‘Performance of the Year’ (ACT). Tamara was also nominated for a 2014 AIR Independent Music Award for ‘Best Independent Classical Release’.

Giving her first public performance at age two playing Bartok, and commencing studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music four years later, Tamara gave her first orchestral performance at age eight. She is the most awarded prizewinner at the Sydney Performing Arts Challenge, winner of the prestigious David Paul Landa Memorial Scholarship for pianists, and has toured Japan and the United States as cultural ambassador for Australia.

Tamara is a regular guest of orchestras and festivals in Europe, America and Australasia, including as soloist with the London Philharmonic, the New Zealand Symphony, and all the Australian Symphony Orchestras with conductors such as Matthias Bamert, Edo de Waart, Asher Fisch, Johannes Fritzsch, Christopher Hogwood, James Judd, Markus Stenz, and Yaron Traub. She has toured with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and as recitalist has performed at the Purcell Room in London, Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Frick Collection in New York, and the Sydney Opera House. She is a frequent guest of festivals such as Pierre Cardin’s Festival de Lacoste, the Kurt Weill Festival, Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Canberra International Music Festival, MONA FOMA, Musica Viva’s Huntington Festival and Soundstream: Adelaide New Music Festival.

Highly sought-after for chamber collaborations, Tamara was a founding member of Berlin’s Mozart Piano Quartet, touring North and South America in this ensemble, and frequently performs with international artists such as composer Elena Kats-Chernin, flautist Sharon Bezaly, tenor Kenneth Tarver, soprano Amelia Farrugia, and the Danish String Quartet. Tamara was also co-founder of Australia Quartet, ensemble in residence at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Recent soloist engagements include with Sydney Symphony (Mozart) and Queensland Symphony Orchestras (Rachmaninov and Mozart), Christchurch Symphony Orchestra (Rachmaninov), Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (Liszt), and Sydney Youth Orchestra (Britten).

2016 engagements include a 6-concert national tour with internationally acclaimed composer and pianist Elena Kats-Chernin for the highly anticipated release of Butterflying, a new recording of Kats-Chernin’s music for ABC Classics, including at Melbourne Recital Centre, Sydney’s Concourse and Riverside Theatres, Arts in the Valley Festival (NSW) and Brisbane’s Music by the Sea. Invited for a residency and several performances at Darwin Festival this year, she also performs with the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) in Sydney and Singapore, at Musica Viva’s Huntington Festival, Bowral Autumn Music Festival, and two concert tours to Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne and France (Paris, Verdun) for the centenary of Australian composer Frederick Septimus Kelly. Tamara also records on the new album by Gurrumul, and performs other solo recitals around Australia.

The 2014 and 2015 seasons also included performances for Sydney Opera House’ All About Women festival, Melbourne Recital Centre, Piers Lane’s Australian Festival of Chamber Music, AWO Chamber Music Festival, Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, North Queeensland Arts Awards, the Richard Bonynge Piano Series, Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, Adelaide’s Recitals Australia, for ABC Classic FM and the APRA-AMCOS Art Music Awards. Tamara also performed concerts in Puerto Rico (USA), for the Art Gallery of New South Wales (with mezzosoprano Fiona Campbell) and as guest artist with the Soundstream Collective (Adelaide) and Acacia Quartet (Sydney).

Tamara has recorded for Chandos, Naxos, ABC Classics, Tall Poppies, Artworks and MDG (Dabringhaus und Grimm), receiving 3 ARIA nominations and critical acclaim, with 7 solo albums all reaching the top 10 in the classical charts. Her 2014 release, Peter Sculthorpe: Complete Works for Solo Piano (ABC Classics) enjoyed several weeks at no.1 in the ARIA Classical and Limelight charts and was ‘Editor’s Choice – Instrumental’ in BBC Music Magazine, January 2015. Earning 5 star reviews, the landmark recording was praised as “Australian piano gold” (BBC Music Magazine), “a profoundly affecting release” (Gramophone), and “an Australian treasure” (news.com.au). Cislowska’s 2013 CD, Close your eyes and I’ll close mine (Tall Poppies) with violinist Anna McMichael was selected as ‘CD of the Week’ on both ABC Classic FM and Fine Music FM, and nominated for an AIR Independent Music Award in 2014.

Booklet for Kats-Chernin: Unsent Love Letters, Meditations On Erik Satie