David Fray

David Fray – Fantaisie (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:00 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erato – Warner Classics

David Fray returns to Schubert with his much-anticipated second recording of the composer’s piano music, a collection of passionate late works. Along with the Sonata in G D894 ‘Fantasie’ and the Hungarian Melody D817, Fray presents two duets for piano four-hands, both composed in the last year of Schubert’s life: the Fantasia in F minor D940 and the towering Allegro in A minor D947, ‘Lebensstürme’ (‘Storms of Life’). Fray invited Jacques Rouvier, his mentor and renowned teacher from the Paris Conservatoire, to join him in the studio, making this album a true labour of love.
The young French pianist’s Schubert interpretations are universally admired, both on disc and in recital. In its review of Fray’s 2009 album of the Moments musicaux and Impromptus D899, The Guardian praised his “discerning musicality… the sheer lucidity and polish of Fray’s playing, its exceptional command of colour and touch and the way he invariably uses that range of sound to point up musical structures in a meaningful way.” Gramophone declared it “a Schubert disc of the rarest distinction”, while BBC Music Magazine joined the fray with: “What’s immediately striking about his Schubert playing is its refinement, and variety of colour.”
Although Schubert composed over 20 sonatas, only three were published during his lifetime, of which the ‘Fantasie’ G Major Sonata D894, published in 1826, was the last. After Schubert’s death, Robert Schumann described this masterpiece as the “most perfect in form and conception” of all Schubert’s sonatas.

„Few pianists have been more acutely sensitive to Schubert’s complex inner world” –Gramophone

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David Fray – J.S. Bach: Partitas Nos. 2 & 6, Toccata (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:05:28 minutes | 958 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics

David Fray, described as «perhaps the most inspired, certainly the most original Bach-player of his generation,“ launched his career with Bach and this is his third album to feature the composer’s keyboard music.

“We shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging the expressiveness of Bach’s music,” says Fray. “The Romantics don’t have a monopoly on expressivity!”
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David Fray – Chopin (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:08:30 minutes | 956 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erato – Warner Classics

Chopin’s music had been absent from Fray’s active repertoire for some 15 years before he recorded this recital, which comprises seven of the composer’s nocturnes, three mazurkas, a polonaise, a waltz and an impromptu. When Fray talks about Chopin – who died in Paris in 1849 aged just 39, having exercised a transformative influence on the piano repertoire – it becomes clear that he sees the composer’s work in archetypally Romantic terms: “For me, Chopin’s music is very fragile, vaporous, perfumed … somewhat intangible. It is so fluid and evanescent – you need to feel that it could just disappear at any moment. What makes it so touching is this ephemeral quality – the mazurkas are like something that you write in the sand … You know that it will be washed away, but the memory will remain. His music palpitates with a sense of the unexpected, the inspiration of the moment. If you tried to engrave it into marble, it would die.”

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David Fray – Bach, JS: Goldberg Variations (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:27:30 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

David Fray adds a landmark of the solo keyboard repertoire to his Bach discography: the Goldberg Variations. “The Goldberg Variations are a real test,” he says. “They are the work of a lifetime, perhaps a work about life itself … a kind of rite of passage, a journey. Every element of human life is in them … When you play the theme again after the 30 variations, in its original purity, it is as if you’re at the end of your life, looking back over everything that has happened in the last hour-and-a-half. Few works give such a sense of eternity”.

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David Fray – Bach: Concertos for 2, 3 and 4 Pianos (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:07 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics

The music on this album gives rise to two intriguing questions. Firstly, are these concertos original Bachian creations? Secondly, should they be played on modern pianos. The two issues are in fact closely linked by the idea of transcription.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Piano Concertos Nos. 22 & 25 – David Fray, Philharmonia Orchestra, Jaap Van Zweden (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:05:31 minutes | 554 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | © Warner Classics
Recorded: Abbey Road Studios, London, Great Britain, 25-27.VIII.2010

David Fray is a lyricist in a thousand. Yet for all his innate sense of finesse, he seldom misses an opportunity to stress the music’s symphonic breadth. Unobtrusively animating the left hand, he provides structural depth as well as courtly accompaniment, often underlining the rhythmic pillars with sonorously articulated basses, which are sometimes doubled at the octave.

At the other end of the expressive spectrum, some may well find him excessively delicate – almost to the point of mannerism. It seems churlish to complain of too much beauty, but there are occasional hints of costume jewellery that detract, for me, from Mozart’s uniquely subtle brand of virility – nowhere more evident than in these two great works (whose scale transcends their already impressive dimensions).

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