Celebrated pianist Emanuel Ax, who plays with “with youthful brio, incisive rhythm, bountiful imagination” (New York Times), will perform Sunday, March 26, as part of the 2023 Great Artists Series at Washington University in St. Louis.
Ax will open the program with Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A Major, D 664, Op. posth. 120. Most likely written in 1819, while Schubert was vacationing in northern Austria, the piece is at once a technical challenge and serene as a summer countryside. Next will be four songs by Schubert, transcribed for solo piano by Franz Liszt: “Aufenthalt (Resting Place),” “Liebesbotschaft (Message of Love),” “Der Müller und der Bach (The Miller and the Brook)” and “Horch, horch! die Lerch (Hark, hark! The Lark).”
Following intermission, the program will conclude with Liszt’s “Vallée d’Obermann (Obermann’s Valley).” The piece, inspired by Étienne Pivert de Senancour’s 1804 novel of the the same title, originally appeared in Liszt’s collection “Album d’un voyageur” (1842), and subsequently in his “Années de pèlerinage,” “Première année: Suisse” (1855).
Tickets and related events
Sponsored by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, the performance will begin at 7 p.m. in WashU’s E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall. Tickets are $40, or $32 for WashU faculty and staff, and $15 for students and children. The E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall is located in the 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity Ave., at the intersection with Delmar Boulevard. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, 314-935-6543. For more information, visit music.wustl.edu.
Emanuel Ax
Born in Lvov, Poland, Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. He made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series and in 1974 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 Avery Fisher Prize.
A Sony Classical exclusive artist since 1987, Ax recently recorded Brahms trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Leonidas Kavakos. He has received Grammy Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas, and with Ma made a series of Grammy-winning recordings of Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. He also contributed to an Emmy Award-winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust, which aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Read his full biography here.
About the Great Artists Series
The Great Artists Series hosts intimate recitals with some of the brightest stars on the contemporary concert stage. Following Ax, the 2023 series will conclude April 16 with Virtuoso violinist Augustin Hadelich.
