Two concerti plus variations make up this new Signum Classics disc
Pianist Alessio Bax is one of the most exciting young pianists today. His accolades include first prizes in the Leeds and Hamamatsu international piano competitions, as well as an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Alessio has just been named the 2013 recipient of the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award.
It is nerve racking to compete head to head. In sports this is a fairly normal part of the job, but when it comes to artists, especially pianists, it is a big shift from the norm.
A musician's routine is quiet and predicable. You generally practice alone and it is here that you polish and learn, working on your fingering, phrasing and the little things that mean so much to you, but might not be even noticed by an audience.
Few single cantos of poetry have ever given as much to the world as Dante’s Canto V from the Inferno and the brief telling at the close of the love, death and afterlife of Francesca da Rimini.
Beginning with Dante in 1308 among the painters, musicians, painters , playwrights inspired by the tale can be included: Mercadante, Leigh Hunt, Ingres, Rodin, Rossini, Rachmaninoff, Doré (whose illustrations are reprinted to this day), Foote and of course Tchaikovsky, whose tone poem has done much to popularize the theme .
