Satie: Parade (Camarata)

Описание: Camarata Contemporary Chamber Orchestra
Released: 1971
Location: Kingsway Hall, London

Eric Satie (1866-1925)
Salvador "Tutti" Camarata (1913-2005)

Parade “Ballet Réaliste"
Jean Cocteau, scenario
Pablo Picasso, settings costumes and curtain
Leonide Massine, choreographer
Erik Satie, music
Performed by Serge Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet
Ernest Ansermet, conductor.

With an array of talent such as this, it is small wonder that this ballet burst upon Paris like a bomb, on the night of May 18th 1917, at the Théâtre du Chatelet. Revolutionary and unprecedented, it had no parallel in the history of the stage. The public, critics and musicians alike, were duly shocked and confused at this first manifestation of musical and visual Cubism, Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and other -isms. The music was scored to a scenario representing a booth at a circus fair, in which the principal characters were a Chinese juggler, an American girl, a couple of acrobats and three showmen. The action takes place outside the showmen’s tent While the actors are going through their antics to lure the public inside to see the real show, thus, the title Parade. A real innovation was Picasso's treatment of the showmen who were encased in wooden frames, Cubistic in style, indicating that they, the commercial minds who run the show, are artificial, imprisoned people, while the actors, who have to provide entertaining illusions at the “Managers’” command, are the real human beings.

The work, in spite of its absurdities and derisions, indicates a renunciation of the material world and a return to the basic elements of reality. This, in effect, relates to the generation of today, which has renounced all traditions and tried desperately to escape from realism, via drugs, etc., and now, having been through this cleansing process, is slowly transcending toward truth and reality from within.

The Ballet opens with a Chorale which leads into the Prelude, a short fugal exposition which suggests to us a religious service being held in a small church in the distance, off the fairgrounds.

The bells of the church are heard in Satie’s score as the congregation disperses. People make their way to the fairgrounds and Satie’s “Managers’’ theme then appears in all its originality and inventiveness.

The activity of the fairgrounds leads us directly to the Chinese Conjurer, who juggles an egg, causes thunder and lightning, and spits fire. He burns himself and stamps frantically to extinguish the flames. The first manager then executes a silent dance without music and is followed by the “Little American Girl’. The “Little American Girl’ goes through a lot of changes. First, she is the naive, demure little one, who although not abashed at removing her clothing and doing the latest Rock and Roll gyrations at the local Discotheque, still she must work for a living as a secretary in a lawyer's office.

She soon tires of these occupations and, in turn, robs a bank, appears in a silent “flick” à la Charlie Chaplin, works in a western saloon off the Barbary Coast, stows away on an ocean liner, is ship-wrecked, meets a gigolo, has a baby and goes back to Arkansas.

In this episode the Camarata Contemporary Group has taken liberties with Satie’s score and added a “Stripper Section” and al so a Rock and Roll group.

The acrobats now enter in a sort of music hall waltz tune with grotesque-like accents.

This section is now treated as purely symbolic in its “mirroring” of past historical events. Its façadical quality has the illusion of seriousness, however, and it dawns on us that the absurdities are for real. They are ourselves... we are truly gazing into the “Looking-Glass” as we hear famous voices from the past and ominous sounds of the present and, with a deep sense of foreboding, we are not sure we like what we see.

Recorded at: Kingsway Hall, London
Engineer: Arthur Lilley
Produced by: Tony D'Amato

Reduction at: Sunset Sound, Hollywood
Engineer: William L. Robinson

Solo Credits: Clarinet: Tom Kelley
Oboe: Derek Wickens
Cor Anglais: Dick Morgan
Flute: William Bennett, Chris Taylor
Guitar: Roland Harker
Piano: Les Pearson
Trumpet: John Wilbraham
1st Horn: Alan Civel
Concert Master: Sidney Sax

All titles courtesy: Editions Salabert
Art Direction: Vincent Biondi
Cover & Poster Illustration: Susan Obrant

Restored from London Deram LP DES 18052

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