The LP reviewed below should be available on CD as "Francis Poulenc Plays Poulenc & Satie and Pierre Bernac Sings Chabrier", Sony 47684

Fanfare review for Klára Körmendi:

Earlier (Fanfare 18:2), I reviewed Satie collections by McCabe (Emergo) and Kaspersen (Classico), in the process mentioning wonderful sets by Masselos and more modern versions by Ciccolini (Angel), Rogé (London), and an exceptional "Portrait" edition from Sony, played by Poulenc. Any of the latter three, or the McCabe, would serve nicely as an introduction to this composer's exceptional music.

Gramophone Sept 79, M.C.:
Mouvements perétuels, Nocturne in D major, Suite francaise
Satie: Descriptions automatiques, Gymnopédie 1, Sarabande No 2, Gnossiennes No. 3, Avant-dernières pensées, Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois
CBS Classics 61838

Satie's music needs a total sympathy rather than a professional technique, and Poulnec is perhaps the ideal performer, himself and instinctive musician and one whose musical sensibility was partly formed by this music. It is essential to disregard the titles of Satie's pieces if one is to take them seriously. If one is either irritated (or too charmed) by the very Parisian pince-san-rire humor, one risks missing the musical quality. No overt espressivo, of course, and no sugar added to the sweet; no condiments of any kind, in fact, least of all salt, which is plentiful in the original mixture. Poulenc's objectivity does not decide whether the child-like quality is real or fictitious, and this is very proper since no one seems to have quite decided whether, in the composer himself, the wide eyes were genuinely mocking or the defense of a real child's simplicity. Each of the Descriptions automatiques is a very simple variation on a single idea - fresh, French and feminine counterparts of Bartók Mikrokosmos pieces. The slow, swaying Valse (not waltz) of the Gymnopédies has its own sober sensual quality, but without the pathos generally associated with sensuality. Sarabande No 2 recalls the close relationship (ambiguous, like everything else about Satie's music) with Debussy; and Borodin's Polovtsians seem to have become naturalized Frenchmen in Gnossiennes No. 3. The "Aubade" of Avant-dernières pensées looks similarly (but is it backwards or forwards?) to Stravinsky. These performances in fact reveal their quality by raising, rather than answering, the familiar questions about Satie's music; and although they will not convert those who find this music unsympathetic, they strengthen the demand that it should be taken, as far as it goes, seriously.

Poulenc's own music poses no problems. The Mouvements perétuels and Suite francaise were written before he was 20, and his slightly stubling performances in fact suggests and original, highly gifted but naturally gawky and not fully trained boy. Chabrier is in the near background and there is a quotation from Petrushka in the third "Mouvement", just as there are wisps of Fauré in the Nocturne; but the overall musical character is unmistakeably Poulenc's, one which a boisterous boyish quality alternates with, and even interpenetrates, a natural sensibility which repeatedly trembles on the verge of a refined, only half-mocking sentimentality. The quality of the early 1952 recording is excellent.