Notwithstanding the inclusion of Liszt’s first Valse oubliée, why call this smartly programmed collection ‘Forgotten Dances’ when the performances are so consistently memorable? Alessio Bax starts things off with an invigorating Bach A minor English Suite that, I daresay, gives Martha Argerich’s famous DG traversal a run for its money. Bax points up the Prelude’s hemiolas and dazzlingly shoehorns decorative passages within the parameters of his bright and steady tempo. The Courante, Bourrées and Gigue ooze crispness and character, while the Allemande and Sarabande showcase Bax’s tastefully pellucid touch.

How does Bax achieve such a powerful crescendo at the Bartók Dance Suite’s outset without the least banging? And no matter how percussive the stabbing left-hand chords may transpire, you hear pitches as opposed to random hammer attacks. Bax’s ever-so-slight accelerations in the Allegro vivace are as idiomatically Hungarian in their accents and points of emphasis as heard in Zoltán Kocsis’s classic recording. As for Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance, you rarely hear the music soar from the ground up, where booming bass lines ignite genuine right-hand fireworks: a wonderful performance.

I’m not 100 per cent convinced by Bax’s slow tempo for the Albéniz Tango, but then again I’ve long been spoiled by Alicia de Larrocha’s sexy lilt and impeccable timing. But the pianist’s subtle dynamic shadings and inflections of pulse in the aforementioned Liszt Valse underline the music’s mystery and ambiguity. Recent recordings of Ravel’s La valse have gone for all-out virtuosity and surface cleverness, most notably in the case of Martin James Bartlett (Warner, 2/24). By contrast, Bax nearly begins from nothing, suggesting rather than stating the bass-register ostinatos, yet managing to keep the gradually emerging textural components in perspective with little help from the sustain pedal. As the music expands across the piano’s full range, Bax avoids most younger pianists’ tendency to bend and twist the themes higgledy-piggledy, while his unrelenting climactic build-ups never lapse into hysteria; they mirror the whiplash urgency and inevitability one hears in orchestral versions from conductors as divergent as Charles Munch (RCA) and Pierre Boulez (DG).

Bax winds down with two encores. First, a multi-levelled Gavotte from Bach’s E major Violin Partita transcribed by Rachmaninov, then a Brahms Hungarian Dance No 6 where he lets his hair down and camps it up. And why not: doesn’t this pianist deserve a treat after gracing us with a programme that may well constitute his finest solo release to date?