INSCAPE

There’s a wistfulness to this album that emerges from its faded colours and the vintage feel of the muffled piano on many of its tracks. French-Canadian pianist/composer Alexandra Stréliski’s music is fragile and vulnerable, its surface optimism a mask for her deep introspection. But it’s also calming: The opening “Plus tôt” is a reassuring waltz, “The Quiet Voice” a lilting, innocent miniature. Stréliski returns to the full-throated sound of a grand piano for the beautiful “Burnout Fugue,” a mesmerizing toccata, before delivering a gentle, rippling ballad, “Revient le jour.”