Frey is in great demand as one of the world's most versatile conductors, and enjoys success in the concert hall and opera house, and in the music of Broadway and Hollywood.

[1] In January 2008, during an interview broadcast on Radio Cairo while conducting in Egypt, Frey stated that "Music is a peaceful island in a river of sadness.

"[3] Frey has been described as "a witty, urbane figure whose wide-ranging genius is evident in the immense breadth of his accomplishments and activities in so many musical genres, and in his performances onstage and in conversation offstage".

[4] In a later interview in The Guardian celebrating his 95th birthday, Terkel discussed his own "diverse and idiosyncratic taste in music, from Bob Dylan to Alexander Frey, Louis Armstrong to Woodie Guthrie".

[5] Frey has also been called "a raconteur, a young Oscar Levant" by American writer and Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor,[6] "his generation's Noël Coward",[7] "everybody's favourite dinner guest",[8] and that "he seems like a classic character from the golden age of the Broadway musical".

[10] A resident of Berlin, Germany, Frey has been frequently invited by the city's diplomatic community to perform for heads of state including President Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama, and former German chancellors Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder, among others.

He also conducted Ensemble Europa (members of the Israel Philharmonic and Deutsche Oper orchestras) in sold-out concerts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Berlin commemorating the 50th anniversary of World War II and the liberation of the concentration camps.

In 2006, he conducted Prague's official orchestral gala concert (with the Stern Chamber Orchestra) celebrating Mozart's 250th birthday on the anniversary day of the composer's birth.

Ricci and Frey performed New York City's official concert commemorating the tricentennial anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach, given in a sold-out Alice Tully Hall on the actual day of the composer's 300th birthday.

In Barrie Gavin's documentary film, Erich Wolfgang Korngold-Adventures of Wunderkind: A Portrait and Concert, Frey performs several solo keyboard works and the first public hearing of Korngold's second symphony, which exists only in a manuscript piano score.

Alexander Frey's recordings are on the Koch International Classics (Entertainment One), Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, RCA Red Seal and Bach Guild labels.

He also gave the first public performance of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's music for the 1944 film Between Two Worlds, as well as the European premiere of the Suite from Schindler's List, composed and arranged by John Williams.

He gave the world premieres of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Vier Walzer (Four Waltzes), Kurt Weill's Albumblatt (the composer's only work for solo piano) and Franz Schubert's then-unpublished Fugue in D minor for organ.

On this program, Terkel interviewed guests as diverse as Martin Luther King, Leonard Bernstein, Mort Sahl, Bob Dylan, Alexander Frey, Dorothy Parker, Tennessee Williams, Jean Shepherd, and Big Bill Broonzy.

[17] Frey studied piano for many years in Chicago as a protégé of the pianist, harpsichordist and teacher Gavin Williamson (1898–1989), one of the last direct links to 19th-century pianism, and who was a pupil of Arthur Schnabel, Wanda Landowska, and Ethel Leginska.