Forgotten Dances

Featuring

Alessio Bax
Johann Sebastian Bach
Béla Bartók
Manuel de Falla
Leopold Godowsky
Franz Liszt

Maurice Ravel
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Johannes Brahms

Did you know?

1/7

Recording & Production

This album was recorded in August 2022 at Saffron Hall in Saffron Walden, Essex, with Mike Hatch and Tom Lewington as engineers and Anna Barry as producer.

Interpretation

Pianist Alessio Bax opens his program with J.S. Bach, implying that Bach, despite predecessors, transformed past tradition to such a degree that his originality is an understandable claim.

Performer Biography

Alessio Bax, the pianist on this recording, won First Prize at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions, and has performed with over 150 orchestras worldwide.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Béla Bartók, a Hungarian composer, aimed to imitate a wide variety of peasant music in his Dance Suite, with different movements reflecting Hungarian, Romanian, and Arabic influences.

Album & Artwork

This recital, titled 'Forgotten Dances,' celebrates the diverse forms of dance, a human impulse dating back to 300 BC in Egyptian tomb paintings.

Composition History

J.S. Bach's English Suites, including the A minor Suite on this album, derived their title not from anything English, but as a tribute to Charles Dieupart, a French musician resident in London.

Composition History

Bartók's Dance Suite was originally composed for orchestra in 1923 and later transcribed for piano by the composer in 1925, with the instruction that it should be 'not too difficult'.