Rachmaninov’s music fits Alessio Bax’s seemingly boundless technique hand in glove, along with his big, luscious, multi-colored sonority and ardent temperament. Indeed, the rhythmic vitality characterizing Rachmaninov’s own extraordinary pianism seeps through Bax’s interpretations. Listen, for example, to the G minor Prelude’s swaggering accents, or notice the angular phrasings in the two Kreisler transcriptions. In contrast to Sviatoslav Richter’s translucent reserve, Bax uses a wider berth of tempo fluctuation in the F-sharp minor and D major Preludes with equally convincing results, while flaunting his awesome double-note chops in the E-flat minor.
Not surprisingly, Bax nails the B-flat major Prelude’s whiplash climactic chords pretty much in tempo, although he sometimes blurs the rolling left-hand arpeggios and jumps beats. I suspect that the murky effect may have something to do with Signum’s overly live and resonant engineering. Conversely, Bax’s lyrical wallowing in the song transcription Daisies causes the music’s backbone to dissipate, although the various minor works prove equally sensitive and shapely.
Reservations aside, there’s always room in the catalog for impassioned, world-class Rachmaninov playing on Bax’s level, and I can’t wait to hear what he might do with the two Sonatas, the Op. 32 Preludes, the Etudes-Tableaux, the four concertos and Paganini Rhapsody, or any other Romantic piano repertoire for that matter!
