"Everyone will tell you I am not a musician. That is correct." Thus the 20th century’s great musical outsider, Erik Satie. A proto-Surrealist who wrote pieces "in the shape of a pear" and a "bureaucratic sonatina," Satie had as his great aim to compose the musical equivalent of furniture, works that would blend into the background of life. Apart from the dreamy first Gymnopédie — near-omniscient in film soundtracks of a certain stripe — his great claim to fame would seem to be the invention of muzak long before its time.

You’d never know that from this fine recording. Jean-Yves Thibaudet reveals not only Satie’s sly wit but also the dazzling range of colors the composer found in writing for an instrument he almost never touched. The slower works (such as the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes) are played with a real sense of wistfulness and a remarkable depth of sound. Others (The Dreamy Fish and the aforementioned paean to bureaucracy) have a rhythmic vitality and naïveté that will bring a smile to even the most jaded listener.

Thibaudet’s greatest achievement is that he’s completely absorbed Satie’s strangely wonderful worldview. Next to this collection, the recordings of Aldo Ciccolini (the benchmark set) seem awkward and rushed by comparison. Like Ciccolini, Thibaudet plans to record all of Satie’s piano works, a prospect that this initial release makes all the more enticing. Forget the stupid title and discover the many joys to be found here.

(Jean-Yves Thibaudet performs Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand with André Previn and the Boston Symphony Orchestra this weekend, October 31 through November 2. Call 617-266-1200.)