Eric Satie celebratory concert, Keswick Music Society, Theatre by the Lake.

IT ALL seemed great fun. La Belle Excentrique (with the infectious rhythms of the High Society Cancan constantly interrupted in the middle of a high kick), and a piece in the form of a pear, and the performers - Pascal Rogé in black and his wife Ami in flaming orange and then in black - running around the piano stool as they swapped roles between pieces by Milhaud, Tailleferre, Durey, Auric, Honegger and Poulenc - Les Six - all together in one pulsating melange.

Taillefaire's impressionistic Images and Honegger's evocative Pastorale d'été sat side-by side with Auric's busy, bustling new York and the percussive colour - the Rogés swapping and copying rhythms - of Poulenc's Sonate.

There had been Debussy's Petite Suite with its hints of things to come and Ravel's Ma Mere L'Oye where the rough, low voice of the Beast was enraptured by Beauty's gentle tones and Le Jardin Feerique where the four hands at the piano possessed all the subtlety and colour of Ravel's orchestra.

But the concert was about Satie, Erik Satie, the joker whose music never seems serious and yet is hauntingly beautiful. It is a 150 years since Satie was born and Pascal Rogé is on a mission to show that Satie is not an amusing footnote in musical history but a key figure in French 20th century music, an absurdist, a minimalist and a surrealist.

Parade, the ballet which scandalised Paris, was quirky and energetic and jazzy with all the brio to shock the bourgeois, and those Morceaux en forme de poire, written to prove to a critical Debussy that his music did have form, had moments when the forced chirpiness gave way to a gentle sadness.

Ami slipped quietly from the stage and Pascal turned inwards, playing Gnossiennes nos 2 & 5. There is something of a performance about playing a duet even when the pianists share the music as closely as Pascal and Ami - at times she seemed to rest her head on his shoulder - but alone with the music as it moved as the mind moves here and there Pascal touched on the melancholy at the very heart of Erik Satie's music.

Poulenc talked about French music being "leavened with that lightness of spirit without which life would be endurable." Pascal Rogé, one of the greatest interpreters of French music, together with Ami showed that the joker is also haunted by beauty and sadness.

A wonderful concert.

Steve Matthews