David Fray and the Cleveland Orchestra drew one of the largest audiences of the summer at the Blossom Music Center on 29th July 2017, with a “luminous” performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24.
Of the performance, Zachary Lewis (Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer) said “Pianist David Fray held court on the night’s first half, charming one of the orchestra’s larger classical crowds of the summer with a luminous account of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24. Not even the wisest of Cleveland’s Mozart-wise listeners could have resisted a reading so abundant in personal character and technical precision.”
He continues, “Of the pianists who regularly play Mozart with the orchestra, Fray’s only real equal is Mitsuko Uchida. Like her, Fray prizes clarity, and trims out more than most in a quest for the essential.
And yet his playing is far from spineless or bloodless. If anything in the C-Minor Concerto No. 24, Fray played up the darkness, probing the first movement’s shadowy corners, turning in a spectacular cadenza, and bringing heat to a frisky, muscular finale.
