World-renowned pianist back in QC after 43 years

Just six days after playing solo in a special Carnegie Hall concert, world-renowned pianist Emanuel Ax will return to partner with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra for the first time in 43 years.

The 74-year-old native of Ukraine – who has won eight Grammy awards among 19 nominations – will perform in a gala concert Saturday, April 27, at 7:30 p.m. at Davenport’s Adler Theatre. Ax and the QCSO will play the immortal, towering Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emporer”) by Ludwig van Beethoven, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s dark and tempestuous Piano Concerto No. 20.

You can experience the full colors of the orchestra with Gustav Mahler’s shimmering Blumine to open the concert and Igor Stravinsky’s dazzling and triumphant The Firebird Suite to close the evening.

As a 31-year-old, Ax performed April 3-5, 1981 with the QCSO (under conductor James Dixon), in the Beethoven Second Concerto (1795), and Liszt Second (1857), at Centennial Hall, Rock Island, and the former Davenport Masonic Temple.

Originally in the QC (under music director and conductor Mark Russell Smith), Ax was going to play the Mozart Concerto in C major, No. 25 as well as the No. 20 (1785), but he substituted Beethoven’s Emporer (1811), in part because he has to play it a couple times in Europe next month.

“I was hoping to consolidate a little and they were nice to say that’s fine,” Ax said in a Monday interview with Our Quad Cities News. “It’s a great work, that’s sure.” He said he’s played all five Beethoven concerti a lot.

The Mozart 20^th is also a very popular work. “It’s a wonderful piece and there’s a cadenza by Beethoven for the first movement,” Ax said.

On Sunday, April 21, he performed his 50^th anniversary concert (solo) at Carnegie Hall in New York, in a program of Schoenberg and a lot of Beethoven.

He said playing at that iconic temple to music never gets old. “It’s always a thrill; it’s always special,” Ax said. He was just 24 when he made his debut there.

‘An exemplar of grace’

The Carnegie Hall website said Ax “remains one of the most beloved pianists to ever perform at the Hall, an exemplar of grace, sensitivity, and musical command.”

He first captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975, he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists followed four years later by the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.

A graduate of New York’s famed Juilliard School, Ax made his New York debut in March 1973 at Alice Tully Hall, and The New York Times wrote:

“The young man is a powerhouse, technically, as he showed in an exceptionally lucid performance of Ravel’s taxing ‘Gaspard de la Nuit,’ whose mercurial ‘Scarbo’ section he played almost without strain. The glistening surfaces of the Ravel’s ‘Ondine’ section also were beautifully polished…”

Critic Donal Henahan also praised Ax’s “well-schooled fluency and power,” writing he “could provide considerable grace and elegance when he felt the music called for it.”

The pianist has made his name in part due to a 51-year partnership with the beloved, genre-spanning cellist Yo-Yo Ma (who soloed with the QCSO at a gala during the 100^th season in May 2015).

“I feel very lucky to be in the position I am. I don’t feel I’m in the same position as Yo-Yo — not only a star in the music world, but a very important person, to American life in general,” the pianist said Monday. “I don’t feel I’m in that position at all. I am lucky to be playing the piano, to have that be my living, and to be friends with Yo-Yo for over 50 years. That’s one of the great pieces of luck in my life.

“Because of that, I think I’ve learned a lot from him in that way,” he said.

Ax was 14 or 15, when he knew he wanted to become a pianist, and his parents supported him. His father died when he was 19 years old, and never got to see his career take off. Ax met Ma (the cellist) when the latter was just 15, at the Juilliard School. Ax is five years older.

“We became good friends and started playing together,” he said. “I was working for his cello teacher, Leonard Rose, and that’s where I met Yo-Yo. I thought he was phenomenal. We just kept in touch, kept playing together and we have ever since.”

“He played the cello, I would say, just as well then as he does now,” Ax recalled. “He was an astounding, precocious, brilliant cellist. He’s probably a greater artist now than he was, but the sheer ability to play the instrument, it was incredible.”

He said he’s recorded most everything chamber-music-wise with Ma, including some new works written for them (including William Bolcom, Anders Hilborg and Peter Lieberson).

Still wracked by nerves

A New York Times profile from September 2023 took note of both how Ax has conquered the Big Apple, but has a complete lack of ego.

“That stamp of quality had become indelible, and it has since endured. Of course, Ax, 74, protests that the half-century career he has enjoyed following that inaugural hometown bow has been largely the product of good fortune,” the Times wrote. “Never mind his Avery Fisher Prize or his 19 Grammy nominations (and eight wins), his long list of premieres or his generosity and ease as a chamber music partner to Ma and other eager collaborators. Even now, Ax will only reluctantly allow that he has much talent at all.”

He said he still gets nervous before concerts, which he said is normal.

“At least it is for me,” Ax said. “I’d like to do well every time I come on stage. Because of that, there’s a certain amount of nervousness. You just never know how things will go. You practice a lot, then you never know.”

In his 70s, he is scaling back the number of performances and touring. Ax turns 75 in June.

Growing up (partly in Winnipeg, Canada), Ax said his father had a wonderful ear, and was one of his first piano teachers.

He loved the piano and most of the way he learned was listening to great pianists.

Ax haunted Carnegie Hall as a young man and went to hear some of the era’s best soloists perform. “I found wonderful things in pretty much all these people,” he said. “That’s how you learn to play — you learn by hearing the great masters and making that your own in the end.

“That’s what I’ve always done and I’m still trying to do it,” the humble veteran said. Ax teaches piano and said the caliber of young students today is astounding, and he learns from them, especially fingering on the piano.

Connecting with listeners

It’s the performer’s goal to always connect with audiences, and Ax tries to get there, at any age.

“People don’t give enough thought to their own feelings and impressions. If you’re not moved by the concert, I don’t think that’s my fault,” he said Monday. “The listener has just as much to do with how the performance comes off, as much as the performer. We don’t give enough thought to that.”

He recalled going to Vladimir Horowitz concerts, leaving “on a cloud,” but his friends didn’t enjoy them, and weren’t “getting it.”

With Beethoven, “it’s hard to resist. It always sounds good,” Ax said.

He could not pick a favorite piece, even just among Beethoven works. Ax loves the Brahms and Chopin concertos, as well as Rachmaninoff and Schumann. “It’s endless,” he said.

Ax enjoys solo, orchestral and chamber performances equally. “I hate to be restricted,” he said.

“I’d like to feel, of the pieces I’m playing, that I’m communicating them better to people,” Ax said. “That’s what I’m trying to do. In terms of what I have left to do, it’s just to get better. We all feel that way. Unfortunately, as I get older, it’s getting harder and harder. In some ways, I’m getting worse. I don’t think I play as accurately as I used to, and I’m trying to forgive myself for that.”

Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University.

The April 27 concert will be simulcast on WVIK 98.3 FM. Tickets are $23 to $97, available HERE. Ax, Smith and other musicians will meet concertgoers after the concert in a “Champagne Afterglow,” which costs $40 per person.

For more information about Ax’s career, visit his website HERE.

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