An unusual and delightful tribute to French music. A young, cosmopolitan and distinguished pianist, at the same time French, Belgian and British, Antoine Préat proclaims, in this first album for naïve, his lifelong attachment to French keyboard music.

But rather than being confined by his instrument, or more broadly by his love of keyboards, Antoine Préat actually takes us into a saga; thereby putting an element of mystery into his retrospective.

Antoine Préat was born in Paris in 1997 and studied French music since adolescence. His mastery of the modern piano is enriched through a long and fruitful experience with the harpsichord.

From these influences emerges today a delicate and clear playing, with neat and fluid articulations. His sensitive style beautifully serves the most introspective moments, such as Les Triolets or L’Enharmonique by Rameau, Kaddish taken from Ravel’s Two Hebrew Songs, Cloches à travers les feuilles by Debussy or the allusive lines imagined by Beffa.

From the harpsichord pieces by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) to the Kaddish by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), here in the relatively little-known arrangement by Alexander Siloti for solo piano, the three Romances sans paroles (op.17) by Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) or the two books of Images by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Antoine Préat underlines the attraction of French masters for ‘all that surrounds’ them.

Like many of his contemporaries, Rameau painted society through character pieces; he invented an aesthetic where grace, humour and virtuosity are combined with a high level of sophistication. In this same vein, Debussy also invented micro-universes, with bewitching climates and enigmatic titles, directly born from a keen observation of nature and sounds.

Maurice Ravel, for his part, does not escape the heady charm of mélodies from more distant worlds. Specially composed for the pianist and the voice of Marie Oppert, the three Mélodies written by Karol Beffa act as pauses, freeze-frames, which in a different way honour the French inclination for storytelling. By this addition of voice and texts, Antoine Préat reminds us, discreetly - also a French virtue - that his programme, mostly wordless, nevertheless remains entirely a matter of storytelling.