The saying “still waters run deep” fits David Fray: his piano playing is poetic, sensitive, discreet and lucid. The French pianist has no longer been an insider tip for many years. Fray became a shooting star in June 2006, when he stepped in for Hélène Grimaud in Paris and Brussels at concerts with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. His repertoire is focussed on the great German-Austrian tradition, with works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schoenberg, although Fray also plays pieces by Chopin, Ravel and Boulez. Fray, who completed his studies with Jacques Rouvier at the Paris Conservatory with distinction and was supported by artists such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Paul Badura-Skoda, Christoph Eschenbach and Pierre Boulez, has often been compared to Glenn Gould because of his idiosyncratic style. He himself sees his greatest role model in Wilhelm Kempff, however, whose “perfect combination of structural thinking and pure poetry” has influenced him profoundly. Fray displays his lyrical, tentative and yet narratively gripping piano style in concerts at nearly every major concert hall in Europe, Asia and the US – from London’s Wigmore Hall, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and the Vienna Musikverein to New York’s Carnegie Hall.
