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Anyone a fan of Ax? He's definatly one of my favorite pianists. I just bought his second Rachmaninoff suite for pianos with Bronfman. I loved his Haydn concertos. Such light touch! Amazing!

Anyone else here like Ax?

Matt

I do, but I haven't yet heard much from him, so I'll suspend any judgement.

There's alot on YT, check it out.

Matt

Actually, Thracozaag if you read this... were you at Juilliard while he was a teacher there?

Matt

Will do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVDZl5-IqpQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8iYKc7vImg

Lovely, but the video is distorted somewhat.

I've heard him live twice. Once with Bronfman, which was fantastic. Once solo when he played a Mozart concerto. It was unforgettably elegant and unmatchable.

Ax's solo recordings of Brahms are some of my favorites. Indeed, his recording of the F minor Sonata is one of the finest I've heard (despite being a tiny bit sluggish in the finale). It's a great pity he didn't record the C major Sonata -- I could only imagine what a fine recording that would be!

He's also a great chamber musician. His collaborations with Ma are of course well known (their recording of the Prokofiev and Rachmaninov Sonatas is just lovely). His recording of the Brahms Piano Quartets (with Stern, Laredo and Ma) is IMHO unequaled, and his recording of the Schumann Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet is also very fine. His recording of the Brahms Clarinet Trio (with Stoltzman and Ma) is my personal favorite for that work -- coupled with very fine recordings of the Beethoven and Mozart trios.

P.S.: That being said, I wouldn't go as far as calling myself one of Ax's lovers.

Indeed. Check out his recording of the Dvorak Eb Piano Quartet with Stern, Laredo and Ma.

Horrors on two accounts: I prefer Ax's playing here to Rubinstein, and I confess to preferring this underrated work to the better known Piano Quintet.

I'm probably a minority in this respect, but I've always been indifferent to Dvorak's Quintet.

Ditto for the Chopin, though I find the one by Argerich and Rostropovich equally appealing.

Steven

I didn't know Argerich did it with Rostropovich too! I only knew of the Maisky/Argerich recording.

Primo performance. I believe they recorded it shortly after the Schumann/ Chopin F minor.

But I always wonder why Argerich and Rostropovich never recorded the Rachmaninov. With respect to Galina (a soprano I absolutely adore), it would have been a marriage made in heaven.

Ax is wonderful. While he's known for playing the standard rep exceptionally well, he also has done things like commissioning, giving the premiere, and making a recording of the John Adams concerto "Century Rolls" (I heard him do it live and was very impressed). And he's been playing Szymanowski's Symphonie Concertante this season. He's one of the few top shelf pianists of his generation who seems interested in going outside the deeply-rutted standard rep.

I did once hear a fairly strange recital of his that was just ordinary and merely competent, except for a unforgettable and great Chopin Polonaise-Fantasie that more than made up for the rest of the program; it is the best performance of that piece I've ever heard, live or recorded. I don't think I've ever been at another recital where one piece turned out to be one of the great performances I've ever heard in my life and the rest was just meh. Very odd.

But anyway, Ax is an excellent pianist and musician, I think. I'm still hoping he'll give us some Alkan; he once had Aesop's Feast scheduled for his recital season, but changed his mind. But that he even scheduled it shows his adventurousness.

I never found anything about Ax's playing to be exceptional. It's never downright bad, just somewhat ordinary. It lacks that distinctive sense of character that truly great pianists have.

I always thought there was something magical about his playing. There's a masterclass video of him on some Debussy... it really seems like he has a great aproach to learning music.

Matt

I've got to get a grip on my unfortunate tendency to misinterpret thread titles.

When I first saw this one, I thought that Matt was making an appeal to guitar players, or that he was alluding to the crime committed by Joan Crawford's character, Lucy Harbin, in William Castle's Strait-Jacket (1964) when she found her husband in flagrante delicto with another woman.

Oh yeah ... Emanuel Ax. Never mind!

Steven

Dang, Steven. That's a major misread.

Yeah, and right on the heels of "How to Select a Baby to Small Grand Piano," too. (For a minute there, I thought that one might be from the same person who previously posted about "Dating a Conover Cable Console.")

Steven

I didn't see those.

I love, and highly recommend, Ax's performances of the Chopin concerti on a period Erard and with a period-instrument orchestra: concerto 1 and concerto 2 . The brochure notes include an interesting article by David Winston of the Period Piano Co. who restored the piano.