Baroque Encores

Most of the music on French pianist David Fray’s album Baroque Encores is drawn from L’Enfant oublié, a theatrical project co-created in 2023 with Fray’s actress wife Chiara Muti about Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France. Appropriately some of the pieces are by 18th-century French composers, with Fray’s delicate legerdemain in Rameau's trill-filled Le rappel des oiseaux making a delectable impression. Fray brings a whimsical, quasi-improvisational approach to Couperin’s Les baricades mistérieuses, and vividly catches the topsy-turvy twists of temperament in Royer’s Le vertigo. The rest of the album is dominated by Bach, a favourite composer of Fray’s. His stately account of the “Andante” from Organ Sonata No. 4, which opens his programme, mingles grandeur and mystery, while the popular “Air” from the Orchestral Suite No. 3 is imbued with a serene poetry. The “Larghetto” from Harpsichord Concerto No. 1 highlights the luminous tonal beauty of Fray’s playing, a constant pleasure in this soul-warming recital.