The Best of Erik Satie  (Audio CD) 
by Erik Satie

For me, the real "Best of Satie" would include at least

excerpts from the opera Socrate and the ballet Parade. But this is a

nice overview of the eccentric composer's keyboard gems, culled from

Klára Körmendi's excellent Satie cycle for Naxos. Many pianists

take Satie's wistful melodic sensibility as license to let the music

wallow and droop. Körmendi will have none of that. Her sensitive,

expertly colored playing brings uncommon, refreshing urgency to the

first three Nocturnes, the well-worn Gymnopédies, and all six

Gnossiennes. Moreover, she has a way of making the composer's

idiosyncratic expressive indications audible without hitting listeners

over the head. The disc concludes with the Gymnopédies in their

familiar orchestrations by Debussy (Nos. 1 & 3) and Roland-Manuel

(No. 2). The French orchestra plays rather patchily in the first but

redeems itself with some very nice playing in the other two. No. 3

features a lovely oboe soloist surrounded by silvery, reed-organ-like

high strings. If you're looking for a Satie piano music start-up kit,

this is the one.