Legendary pianist Emanuel Ax performs on Sunday, May 6 at 3 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.
The Series presents a special program featuring pianist Emanuel Ax honoring President Stephen C. Ainlay and Judith Ainlay. The program includes Mozart’s F-minor Sonata, K. 533/494, Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnets, Bach’s G-Major Partita, BWV 829, and Beethoven’s Andante favori, WoO 57 paired with his Waldstein Sonata, Op. 53.
Born in Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Canada with his family when he was a young boy. He studied at The Juilliard School and Columbia University, capturing 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 and, four years later, he was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize.
Last season, Ax participated in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Celebrate the Piano festival and a European tour with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. He performed with the orchestras of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Washington, Nashville, Atlanta, St. Louis, Montreal, and Ottawa, and gave recitals in Vancouver, San Francisco, and the Midwest. In Europe, he returned to the Berlin Philharmonic, followed by a tour to Vienna, Salzburg, Graz, and London performing Schubert’s Winterreise with Simon Keenlyside, and he presented both Brahms concertos in Amsterdam and Paris with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Bernard Haitink.
Individual tickets are $55 and $45. For information, call (518) 388-6080.