Brighton Fringe is famous for little jewels, tucked away down the back streets, above a pub or in stowaway tents.

A lucky audience can find themselves transported by laughter, drama or, in this case, keyboard music.

French pianist and scholar Jean Angliviel - making his Brighton Fringe debut - performed Mozart, Schubert, Debussy and Liszt in an enchanting hour at the Friends’ Meeting House.

Mozart’s D Minor Fantasia , an incomplete fragment of reflective beauty, was given a muscular freedom not always associated with Mozart as well as the pianists’ own concluding cadence.

Two Schubert Impromptus from Op. 90, the lyrical No 3, and arpeggiated No 4, became impressionist, perhaps revealing Jean Angliviel’s nationalist penchant for Debussy whose four succeeding preludes displayed a musician creating sublime effects on a piano that forgot to be percussive.

Here, Angliviel seemed at the height of his powers, demonstrating Les Arpeges as pyrotechnics with a heart, dazzling technique with a very French soul.

Jeux D’eaux provided a rippling finale that remained music even with all of Liszt’s decorative and difficult pianistic flourishes. Some of the melodic lines underneath all the watery cascades got a little lost, but the recital remained an informal musical treat of great charm.

*Angliviel is also performing at All Saints Centre, in Friars Walk, Lewes, tonight (May 27) at 8pm and Brighton Unitarian Church, in New Road, tomorrow (May 28) at 8pm.

Three stars