Emanuel Ax, Piano
Late Chopin
Performers
Emanuel Ax, Piano
Program
ALL-CHOPIN PROGRAMTwo Nocturnes, Op. 55
Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat Major
Three Mazurkas, Op. 56
Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60
Nocturne in E Major, Op. 62, No. 2
Scherzo No. 4 in E Major
Berceuse in D-flat Major, Op. 57
Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat Major, Op. 51
Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58
Encore:
Nocturne in F-sharp Major, Op. 15, No. 2
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.
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At a Glance
Chopin revolutionized piano music in dozens of mazurkas, nocturnes, impromptus, and other solo pieces that imbued the superficial brilliance of the salon style with unprecedented poetic depth. No less a virtuoso than Felix Mendelssohn hailed his Polish-born contemporary as “a second Paganini, doing entirely new things, and all sorts of impossibilities which one never thought could be done.” R. Schumann, himself a master of keyboard character pieces, extolled Chopin’s genius, in which, he wrote, “imagination and technique share dominion side by side.”
On tonight’s program, Emanuel Ax surveys the increasing range and complexity of Chopin’s music in the mid-1840s, a period when he was energetically expanding the scope of his art—and his stylistic horizons—under the influence of Liszt.
Bios
Emanuel Ax
Born in Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv. Mr. Ax won the Michaels Award of the Young Concert Artists in 1975, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize.
Highlights of the 2019–2020 season included a tour of European summer festivals with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Bernard Haitink, a tour of Asia with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, and concerts with Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall in March 2020. Additional recitals and orchestral appearances were postponed due to COVID-19, and like many artists around the world, Mr. Ax creatively responded to these unprecedented circumstances. He hosted “Legacy of Great Pianists,” part of the online Live with Carnegie Hall series, in which he highlighted legendary pianists who have performed at the Hall. He also joined Mr. Ma in a series of surprise pop-up concerts for essential workers in venues throughout the Berkshires community. When concert activities resumed, he appeared in the reopening weekend of Tanglewood, both with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and in a Beethoven trio program with Mr. Kavakos and Mr. Ma. Concerts with the Colorado, Pacific, Cincinnati and Houston symphonies; Los Angeles and New York philharmonics; and Minnesota, Philadelphia, and Cleveland orchestras follow in the 2021–2022 season.
Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987. He has received multiple Grammy Awards and the ECHO Klassik award for Solo Recording of the Year. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds honorary doctorate degrees in music from Skidmore College, Yale University, and Columbia University.