By Harris Goldsmith

Few years ago I sat next to Emanuel Ax as we listened to a headstrong young Russian pianist rehearse the Liszt E-flat Concerto with the New York Philharmonic. The performance was a little self-indulgent. Manny's reaction startled me: I had come to consider him one of the most genial of people, one who has, time and again, shown himself to be wonderfully diplomatic and open-minded, one of the most gracious and generous colleagues in the music world. But on this occasion his face reddened and I heard him mutter, "This is an insult to Liszt!" At first I was slightly amused at his indignation over a performance of this concerto especially. Wasn't Liszt himself the arch-protagonist of shameless manhandling of music (including his own)? Why should anyone be so riled to hear someone riding the old war-horse as an egotistical jockey? Who would care?

But this little incident indicates just how serious and conscientious an artist Emanuel Ax is, and just how much he respects all music.

Certain interpreters-for instance, the late Glenn Gould-trumpet their individuality and take delight, even perverse delight, in flouting "tradition." Emanuel Ax is of a different stripe temperamentally, a true "centrist," whose innate good taste recoils from any semblance of vulgarity or insincerity. Ax is a debonair exponent of Chopin, Schumann, and mainstream Romantic piano music, but an abiding intellectual curiosity and exacting self-criticism continually spur him to take on new challenges: period instruments; the Classical symmetry, and sometimes asymmetry, of Haydn's geometric keyboard music; Schubert's sonatas; Beethoven's Diabelli Variations; the Schoenberg Piano Concerto; and even later fare-works by Copland, Henze, Tippett, Laderman, Schwantner, Previn, Bolcom, Peter Lieberson.

In September 1997 he gave the world premiere with the Cleveland Orchestra of John Adams' new piano concerto, Century Rolls, followed by the European premiere with Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw in 1998. He will play it around the world several times during the 1998-99 season. In May 1999 he will continue his championing of modern American composers with the first performance of Christopher Rouse's Seeing for Piano and Orchestra with the New York Philharmonic. In counterpoint to his forays into contemporary music, he even recently tried his hand at playing the timpani, taking lessons from percussionists to gain an insider's view of the discipline.

One important facet of the Ax career is his passionate involvement with chamber music (always a true measure of a solo performer's innate worth). To hear his fellow musicians talk, one must conclude that he is the perfect colleague.

One important facet of the Ax career is his passionate involvement with chamber music (always a true measure of a solo performer's innate worth). His ongoing partnership with cellist Yo-Yo Ma took wing when Ax, then a young, aspiring pianist earning his bread playing for Leonard Rose's Juilliard studio, found an artistic kindred spirit in Rose's 15-year-old Chinese pupil. Together Ax and Ma have played innumerable concerts, and they have recorded virtually the complete repertory written for the two instruments, winning three Grammys in the process. They have even expanded the duo into trios and quartets with Isaac Stern, Jaime Laredo, Young Uck Kim, and Pamela Frank. Ax's vast discography (first for RCA Victor; now for Sony Classical) has brought him together with bassist Edgar Meyer, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, and the Tokyo, Cleveland, and Guarneri quartets.

To hear his fellow musicians talk, one must conclude that Ax is the perfect colleague. Stern, who has had few peers in a long and distinguished career, sings the pianist's praises with particular authority. "He is one of the most superbly gifted pianists of our time," he says warmly, "as well as one of the most knowledgeable and well-read of musicians. Manny is utterly incapable of making an unmusical sound or statement. The range of his touch, his control of tone color, his sense of playing the piano as if it were a bowed rather than hammered string is phenomenal. It's wonderful to make music with him, for he has a born sense of what is naturally right in music and has one of the most extraordinary disciplines of any musician I know. Besides that, he is a wonderful husband, father, friend, and dinner partner. As you can see," he laughs, "I have nothing good to say about him at all!" A suggestion that Ax's genial temperament may cause him to be overly deferential at times leads to an instant rebuke from Stern. "That couldn't be farther from the truth. Don't let his easygoing nature fool you-he has very strong interpretive ideas and is never shy about expressing them. I am not at all worried about the future of our musical tradition in such hands as his."

Yo-Yo Ma attributes the pianist's grasp of tradition-in terms of education, cultural orientation, and civilized way of life-to his Austro-Hungarian way of thinking. Ax was born in Poland and moved to Canada with his family when he was a young boy. He studied with Mieczylaw Munz at The Juilliard School, and his career received an auspicious beginning in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition at age 25. He went on to collect the Young Concert Artists Award in 1975 and the Avery Fisher Prize four years later.

Manny will make musical choices and stick with them," says Ma, "but the next night he might make an entirely different choice. He is not building a monument, he is dealing with a living, changeable art. It's a wonderful combination of a definite point of view with optimum flexibility. As a musician, he pays enormous attention to details and how they add up to the construction of the piece, so he spends a lot of time rehearsing, gestating, and evolving. He is constantly seeking to learn and to share and to make things a little better. I think that's because he has seen the other side of life too. As a friend and person, he holds loyalty in the highest regard, from deep inside. I feel unbelievably fortunate in having such a great personal and musical friend."

Beyond a chronicle of Ax's full performance and recording schedules, there are changes to note taking place in Ax's pianism. His superb recordings of the Brahms solo piano music are becoming more acute, sharper in profile and characterization. There are scintillant, biting accents in some of the less frequently encountered Haydn keyboard sonatas. Some of this newfound charisma may come from the added brightness of sound and the tonal properties of the instrument used for the recordings, but much of this artistic growth must be credited to the player himself. This subtle metamorphosis especially impressed me when I listened again to Ax's earlier recording of Chopin's F-minor Piano Concerto with Ormandy and Philadelphia alongside the recently released version of the same work with Charles Mackerras at the helm. In this new recording-the pianist's first on a period instrument-he makes a beguiling sound on the Érard Parlor Grand; its delicate patina is perhaps even more seductive than that of the sonorous Steinway nine-footer, and the new Sony Classical recording demonstrates the enormous progress that has been made in the playing of historical instruments. I'll wager that Ax, earlier in his career, wouldn't have dared attempt the enormous expansive freedom, boldness, concentration, and harmonic tension that exist in this new recording.

Ax's very conservatism and utter reliability might be the clue to why some of us have occasionally regarded him complacently. But that complacency is our problem, not his. All music lovers are reaping the rewards of Ax's impressive growth, and it is heartwarming to encounter true originality, without an iota of egotism or pretense.