Remarkably, David Fray had kept Chopin out of his active repertoire for 15 years before recording this disc. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that it is a very considered, patient affair. Fray’s Chopin is not setting out to impress or knock anyone’s socks off; and the preponderance of Nocturnes and works of a nocturnal nature also suggests as much. But, as with his previous collection of Schubert (Editor’s Choice, 5/15), it is the poetry that shines through, the chaste sensuality, the gentle melancholy, not to mention the exquisitely pearly tone, captured in beautiful sound by the Erato engineers.

At the start of the disc, Fray’s right hand sings out the famous melody of the Op 9 No 2 Nocturne with beguiling tenderness. Listen to the care with which he picks out the bass notes in Op 48 No 1 or the gentle rippling of that work’s broken-chord middle section; he also manages to build the passion in the final minute within self-imposed restraints, creating a sophisticated tension. Throughout, you get the sense of his Nocturnes wanting to retreat into dreamlike Impressionism, resisting the temptation towards rhetorical grandeur. Where others might push forwards and outwards, Fray tends to rein himself in.

His approach suits the Mazurkas he choses too, three of them peppered across the programme, as well as the single waltz. He brings a moving, touching tenderness to all of them – sample his gently lilting Op 63 No 3 for a taster. Fray’s approach is supremely seductive but it does occasionally sound as though he’s about to nod off, and for me the Polonaise-fantaisie, in particular, calls for a palette offering more than the muted moonlit blues that Fray employs. Sometimes, too, his rubato, in left-hand accompaniments, feels a little over-determined.

For all his reflectiveness and introspection, though, Fray manages never to sound merely self-regarding or indulgent. This is Chopin-playing of considerable seriousness and beauty.