Aldo Ciccolini plays Satie on the piano (the original versions). IIRC he had four albums in the 1960's of Satie piano music on French EMI. I have the British version EMI ASD2389 of volume 1, on vinyl. It may be on some form of digital. He is particularly well known for his playing of Satie. The pieces you refer to are Satie's most famous, the 3 Gymnopedies, each fairly short. Debussy arranged 1 and 3 for orchestra. Lots of recordings of these. Larry
Alexandre Tharaud has made a beautiful recording with Harmonia Mundi covering several pieces of Satie, Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc. It obtained a « Golden Diapason » in 2015 from the French Magazine Diapason.
Ciccolini’s complete recording of Satie’s work with EMI (I have the full set in LP and CD) is great and certainly one of the best interpretations but the sound quality is not the best available.
Occam's Razor: I just went to YT and listened to the two I was told to consider. Seems the Reinbert de Leeuw one is played at a much lower tempo than every one else's interpretation (guitar, piano, whatever). More emotion, it seems but one has to really "listen" to it. The faster pacing renditions seems to allow "multi-processing". Perhaps both.
Alex, thanks for the tip for the Loussier jazzy interpretation. I have two of his other works...very good. Do you know if Telarc ever released an SACD version?