Dorothy Bond (soprano)
Margaret Good (piano)
The Leighton Lucas Orchestra
(Leader, Ronald Good )
Conductor, Leighton Lucas
Jack-m-the-Box, which Satie regarded as one of his best works, was composed for a pantomime in 1900. To Satie's distress, however, the score (written out for piano) disappeared, and he believed he had lost it in a cab. After his death it was found among some old papers behind one of the pianos in his room. Marcelle Meyer played it at a memorial concert of Satie's music in 1926; It was orchestrated by Milhaud the same year and used for a divertissement by Diaghilev.
Henri Sauguet, who was born at Bordeaux in 1901, studied with Koechlin in Paris and wes laier associated with Satie. In his Cantara La Voyante we hear a fortune-teller giving a séance. The first part deals wilti fortune-telling by cards; the second part is concerned with astrology; and the last with palmistry. The composer's treatment ot his subject, it has been said, is ' lyrical and gently ironic.' Harold Rutland