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    ALBUM REVIEWS

    Mar 20, 2020 4 minutes
    Reviewed by Peter Quantrill, Warwick Thompson and Erica Worth

    ALESSIO BAX

    Italian Inspirations: Works by Bach, Dallapiccola, Liszt and Rachmaninov

    Signum Classics SIGCD 611

    ★★★★

    As Alessio Bax notes in his introduction to this album, Italy produced almost no piano music during the Romantic period, probably because of the contemporary prominence of Italian opera. So in devising an Italian piano recital he’s turned his attention to transcriptions. He gives a delightfully crisp account of Bach’s Concerto in D minor (BWV 974) based on an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello, and he relishes the technical and dramatic challenges of Rachmaninov’s high-octane . The – but since this dull set of plinky-plonk variations is actually written according to the rules of Austro-German dodecaphony, maybe it’s not that Italian after all. The highlight is undoubtedly Liszt’s , which shows Bax in a fabulously dramatic, pearl-clutching mode. Grand gestures, high drama, whisper-thin , gorgeous sonorities… Bravo!  

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