Ax Plays Brahms
September 13, 2019 | Hill Auditorium
Behind the Music
Program
COPLAND Appalachian Spring
KODÁLY Dances of Galánta
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83 in B-flat major
Emanuel Ax, piano

We open our 91st season with the world-renowned acoustics of Hill Auditorium.
Emanuel Ax, Piano

Born in modern day Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada with his family when he was a young boy. His studies at the Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award (just like this season’s featured cellist Zlatomir Fung!). Additionally, he attended Columbia University where he majored in French. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and 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.
Always a committed exponent of contemporary composers, with works written for him by John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Krzysztof Penderecki, Bright Sheng, and Melinda Wagner already in his repertoire, most recently he has added HK Gruber’s Piano Concerto and Samuel Adams’s “Impromptus”.
Mr. Ax has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. His other recordings include the concertos of Liszt and Schoenberg, three solo Brahms albums, an album of tangos by Astor Piazzolla, and the premiere recording of John Adams’s Century Rolls with the Cleveland Orchestra for Nonesuch. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax also contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th century music/Piano)
Mr. Ax resides in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki. They have two children, Joseph and Sarah. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, Yale University, and Columbia University.
Fast Facts
The Hungarian Influence
Evolving Imagery
Aaron Copland’s music has come to represent a sense of place. From the western plains to urban metropolises, Copland had an undeniable talent for painting the landscapes of American beauty. Despite its title and current association with the area, Appalachian Spring was originally composed free from the thought of the natural Appalachian landscape. Copland and Martha Graham worked to create a ballet exploring life in a rural Pennsylvania town with music that outlined human characteristics and unfolded programmatically.
FURTHER LISTENING
by the numbers
Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 Duration (mins)
Appalachian Spring commission fee for Copland from Martha Graham (dollars)
Musicians in Your A2SO

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