Every so often, a concert takes us away from a world of political campaigns, rising gas prices and sinking 401(k)s and into realms of magic. Such was the case with pianist Alessio Bax's recital Saturday evening at Southern Methodist University's Caruth Auditorium. Now on the faculty of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, Mr. Bax was presented in the school's Distinguished Artist Recital Series.
In 2000, the Italian-born pianist, who did graduate study at SMU with Joaquín Achúcarro, won one of the most prestigious international piano competitions, the Leeds. And when I first heard him, he sounded like a competition winner: technically skilled and tasteful, but without a distinctive stamp.
Each time since then he has evinced more personality. This time represented a quantum leap, with playing that went all-out for expressive intensity.
Clean-cut good behavior has become too much the defining virtue of modern music-making. Mr. Bax's performances, by contrast, risked everything. In virtuoso passages of the Beethoven Appassionata Sonata and the first book of Brahms' Paganini Variations he pushed power and speed to the very edge – as both those pianist-composers reportedly did in their performing heydays.
As with old pianists captured in early 20th-century recordings, Mr. Bax went for the big gestures, bending the little notes to larger purposes. But quiet openings of the Beethoven and the Brahms Op. 10 Ballades, and two gentle Bach transcriptions by Alexander Siloti, seemed to come out of some dreamy nowhere. Never have the ballades sounded so wondrous strange, their harmonic progressions so exquisitely unpredictable.
Great music-making has the illusion of spontaneity – and a quality of ecstasy. Start to finish, Mr. Bax sounded as if improvising the music on the spot. He went wherever its spirit, now tempestuous, now sublime, took him. If clarity was occasionally sacrificed to earthquake, wind and fire, so be it. But introspective music became an out-of-body experience.
Alessio Bax made his first entry and it was clear within minutes that here at last was a pianist with the style, the sound, the breadth of technique and, above all, the ability to listen and participate in a spontaneous give-and-take interpretation with Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
Bax pulled together that perfect Brahmsian balance of intellect and emotion through subtle, generous and communicative playing
This was real music-making that made its own world on stage and invited the audience in as guests, rather than running at them screaming "look at me"
… control and eloquence, innate understanding of the work's logic and impetus and those additional magical ingredients -weight of sound, clarity of detail and absolute conviction in his conception of the music
The Baroque style is seen through richly varied perspectives, ranging from the audacious to the devotional, from the intimate to the heaven-storming.
…His playing quivers with an almost hypnotic intensity.
