David Fray - Chopin (2017) [24/88 FLAC]

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."