1990 Penguin Guide :

Roland Pöntinen is a young Swedish pianist, still in his early twenties when this recording was made. He seems perfectly in tune with the Satiean world, and his playing is distinguished by great sensibility and tonal finesse. He is very well recorded too.

Fanfare Mar/Apr 87, J.D.W:

Colleague E.G. in the course of dealing with some recent Satie piano music collections comes across a great truth as he offhandedly remarks that this music is "not that difficult to play badly." While he is evidently referring to the casual pianist, his observation goes just as piercingly to the examples before him, which unfortunately (for whom?) we don't agree upon. There truly have not been all that many Satie selections on record that are played well, in the sense that Pöntinen brings to this deceptively simple-seeming, seldom really outrageous music.

This 23-year-old Swede of apparently Finnish extraction approaches everything he chooses to do with comprehensive technical preparation, intense sensibility for good pacing and organization, and not a trace of the knowing smirk of restricted means that sinks most performers. There has not been a collection of any size done from such convincingly general premises since Frank Glazer's Vox Box, which appeared just 18 years ago, and which won't be ready for retirement until the last LP disappears from the retail bins.

Aside from this wholeness of interpretive approach, Pöntinen has been given unobtrusively natural recorded perspective, with plenty of detail for his full-blooded tonal qualities. As may be gathered from the headnote, this 61-minute CD contains everything that most listeners need to know about the piano music of Erik Satie. Less casually curious parties and real mavens also need to supplement their macrobiotic diets of Ciccolini, Rogé, Armengaud and Entremont. It is strongly recommended.

American Record Guide: Fall 87, Moore:

… Pianist Pöntinen provides a well-chosen program, recorded resonatly in BIS's usual clean, full-blooded style. Pöntinen picks from both before and behind Satie's piano giving us both the well-known and recently discovered set of Gnossiennes and Pièces froides and material as the Sarbande of 1887 (why not all three, Mr. P?) and as late as the Sonatine bureaucratique. The latter, is one of the few items left out of the valuable collection of Satie's piano music published in 1971 by Max Eschig and reprinted by Associated here, which contains most of the texted pieces with English translations, and it is a pleasure to note that the entire text for this work is included in the liner notes. Regrettably, it is given with no English translation, but at least those of us with some French background may now read of a day in the life of a bureaucrat, as he goes gaily off to work, meditates on his chances for advancement (in the slow movement), and sings an ancient Peruvian air while a neighboring pianist plays Clementi, which makes him sad. Unfortunately, the most amusing statements require a familiarity with idiomatic French. For some reason, pianists are still taking seriously Satie's amusing statement in which he forbids anyone to read the texts while performing; therefore much of the personality of these little musical sketches goes by the board. However, Pöntinen is a lively and poetic player, and the disc contains sixty one minutes of Satie.

See comparison with Ciccolini CD