[Alessio Bax’s] virtuosity is effortless, lyrical and never hard-driven; and while others struggle to clarify Brahms’s potential opacity, Bax makes light of every devilish demand.

His way, too, with the more interior Brahms is no less memorable, as ardent as it is refined in the early and introspective Ballades, pianistically and musically immaculate in the hallucinatory flights of No 3 and as poetic as anyone could wish in No 4, where the music seems to have stepped straight from the pages of Brahms’s Lieder. In the Op 76 Klavierstücke, Bax captures all of Brahms’s half-lights…and is unforgettably eloquent in the romantic turbulence of No 1 and in the storm clouds that race across No 5. © 2013 Gramophone Read complete review on Gramophone

The intriguingly named, unreasonably photogenic pianist Alessio Bax proves himself here to be an ideal Brahmsian. The disc’s sampling of Brahms’s early, middle, and late piano music follows an artful sequence that moves from the yearning, gloomy op. 10 Ballades, to the emotionally varied, experimental op. 76 pieces, to the Paganini Variations’ splendid showiness, and into even further levels of exhibitionism with Bax’s doctoring of a Cziffra-transcribed Hungarian Dance.

I can’t recall hearing a less than compelling performance of Brahms’s four ballades. Gilels, Michelangeli, Gould, and Rubinstein, among others, each recorded distinguished versions, but Bax’s performance brings out the jagged rhyme schemes of their phrase structure with even greater eloquence than his predecessors. He delivers the music’s narrative like a superb Lieder singer, and his obvious comfort with Brahms’s sometimes awkward piano writing enables him to color the music more subtly than I have heard before.

The op. 76 set of eight intermezzos and capriccios is the largest of Brahms’s collections of short piano pieces from his later years. It is less often heard than opp. 116-119, and represents a far more resourceful approach to piano writing than op. 10. Bax is wonderfully responsive to the music’s variety of textures and moods. It’s as if he paints each piece with its own palette of colors, enhanced by beautifully clear articulation and imaginative pedalling, and always with a natural, eloquent arc to the phrasing. Some carefully clipped, staccato chords in the second piece—Brahms in a humorous, Hungarian mode—sounded unusual to me, but they are found in the score, more scrupulously observed by Bax than other pianists. The set’s musical high point is reached in the final C-Major Capriccio, a contrapuntally dense, harmonically searching, and emotionally uninhibited piece that Bax turns into a suitably ecstatic conclusion.

When I want to listen to any of these pieces, this truly notable disc will now be my first choice. I urge you to hear it. © 2013 Fanfare Read complete review

The challenges of Brahms’ piano works suit Alessio Bax’s big technique, multi-colored sonority, and innate musicality. He imbues the Op. 10 Ballades’ first two pieces with both long-lined lyricism and fiery power while assiduously integrating the final piece’s improvisatory impulses into a fluid whole.

…Bax’s joyful panache is right on the money, as in his amazingly brisk and supple dispatch of the triple-time Book II Variation 5. For an encore Bax dusts off Georges Cziffra’s garish rewrite of Brahms’ Fifth Hungarian Dance…speeds up the basic tempo, and polishes its jagged edges, while adding a few flourishes of his own for good measure. Altogether a fine, often stimulating and excellently engineered release. © ClassicsToday.com Read complete review