Emanuel Ax – Hudson-Housatonic Arts

Andris Nelsons, Emanuel Ax, and the BSO on Opening Night. Photo Hilary Scott.

Tanglewood Opening Night: the Beethoven Anniversary Resumes, and more Beethoven, Schumann, and Iman Habibi

August 4, 2021August 4, 2021Michael Miller

In our 21st century barrage of high-profile concerts at major venues, streaming services, CDs, and now, with the COVID-19 Pandemic, Zoom, it takes some small effort to recover the occasional origins of the works we hear regularly as part of our diet of classical music. Historically the original context of the music is replaced by some other, contemporary event or circumstance deemed worthy of celebration by the organizers, whether it is a symbolic political event like the demolition of the Berlin Wall or some European Union event, the demise or commemoration of a musician or donor especially connected to the sponsoring program, or, once upon a time, Hitler’s birthday. We all know that there was a lot to celebrate in the season opener, even if Tanglewood had dispatched its most elaborate celebratory event the previous week in a July 4 event with the Boston Pops—and fireworks—usually held on the Esplanade in Boston.

Yo-Yo Ma, Leonidas Kavakos, and Emanuel Ax. Photo Hilary Scott.

Not Quite Lost in Space: Kavakos-Ax-Ma play Beethoven

August 4, 2021August 4, 2021Larry Wallach

Yo-Yo Ma pointed out that the trio arrangement that Beethoven made of his Symphony no. 2 allowed musical amateurs to experience this work at home in lieu of the (rare) opportunity of hearing it in a live performance. The arrangement was published many years before the orchestral original was performed outside of Vienna. It was meant to be played and heard in a domestic space in which scale of its gestures would present themselves in the correct proportions, filling the salon with what, for its time, was its larger-than-life energy and personality.

Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax Alone at Tanglewood

Tanglewood Stream Fishing 2020 Part 2: Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax Play Brahms, Beethoven, Mendelssohn

September 9, 2020September 12, 2020Seth Lachterman

Ax and Ma chatted about their relationship over the years and the personal idiosyncrasies that sustain or annoy them both. To engage novice listeners, the Beethoven’s sonata became the subject of some slightly nerdy talk about the tonic-dominant-tonic arches that propelled the Beethoven’s sonata. Finally, somehow, they drifted to discussing chef Jacques Pépin’s freaky tolerance for seizing hot skillets its supposed relevance in interpreting the piano attacks in the scherzo.

Emanuel Ax joins the BSO and Andris Nelsons for Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat. Photo Hilary Scott.

Tanglewood’s Boston Symphony Orchestra Opening Night, Friday, July 5, 2019: Mozart Piano Concerto in E Flat, K. 482 and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony

July 12, 2019July 12, 2019Larry Wallach

On Friday night as evening approached, a quintet of wind players from the Boston Symphony, joined by excellent pianist Jonathan Bass, set the mild summer air of Ozawa Hall in motion with an elegant program of wind music well-suited to assist listeners transition from the pleasures of a perfect day in the Berkshires to the orchestral depths of tragedy, passion, and triumph by nightfall. Mozart initiated both programs with elegant, joyful, and subtly profound works composed at the apex of his career: the piano and winds quintet, which he professed to be his favorite among works composed to that point, and the concerto, no. 22, which (along with no. 23) stands unostentatiously between better-known works on either side (nos. 20 and 21 preceding, nos. 24 and 25 following).

Ups and Downs of the Boston Music Season, mostly Boston Symphony with Andris Nelsons, 2016-2017

September 15, 2017September 15, 2017Charles Warren

The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2017 Tanglewood Music Festival, very successful by many reports, has just concluded, with the new season in Boston to begin very soon. I offer here the perspective of a look back at the preceding season in Boston, commenting mostly on BSO, but also a few other events. I was able to attend only one Tanglewood concert this summer: the impressive concert performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, conducted by BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons, with a large, excellent cast. A good sign for the future.

A Schubertiade. Moritz von Schwind, watercolor

A Summer Home for Schubert at Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood I, hosted by Emanuel Ax

July 15, 2017December 24, 2017Larry Wallach

Emanuel Ax, “curator” of the eight Schubert concerts that will span the Tanglewood summer, put himself in the role of a genial and supportive host for the first offering of the series. The performance felt like a gathering of an extremely talented group of family and party guests on the stage of Ozawa Hall. His own contributions before intermission were to provide modest backgrounds for works that featured singers and instrumentalists, those being the two large-scale scenas “Dir Hirt auf dem Felsen” and “Auf dem Strom” featuring BSO soloists on clarinet (William Hudgins) and horn (James Sommerville) respectively, alongside Tanglewood Music Center student vocalists Alexandra Smither and Christopher Reames.

Seiji Ozawa Hall. Photo © 2012 Michael Miller.

TMC Nights, 2012, including the Festival of Contemporary Music

September 23, 2012September 24, 2012Michael Miller

The Boston Symphony played a few brilliant concerts in the shed in this anniversary year — not least Charles Dutoit’s two days of Berlioz, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, but the real excitement came from Ozawa Hall, as the TMC Fellows played with the full excitement of youth in a series of demanding concerts, all weighted towards the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in consistently stimulating and coherent programs, divided between the regular TMC schedule and the Festival of Contemporary Music. This was, in addition, the most satisfying FCM since the Elliott Carter Tribute, because the selection of composers not only had its own coherence in Oliver Knussen’s experience and taste

Pamela Frank and Emanuel Ax take their bows. Photo Leslie Teicholz.

Emanuel Ax explores Beethoven sonatas; Pamela Frank returns…with Brahms at Tannery Pond

August 16, 2012March 23, 2019Michael Miller

There was a certain amount of mystery surrounding this concert since the Tannery Pond season was first announced earlier this year. Venues usually have Emanuel Ax’s programs in plenty of time to include them in their advance season previews. Even if a musician’s repertory is generally familiar, audiences begin to feel insecure, if they don’t know what they’re going to hear in advance, but Emanuel Ax is one of the few musicians who can sell out a house without a program, and that is what happened. The delay made it possible offer a very special surprise, the return of the great violinist, Pamela Frank, to the concert stage after an absence of over a decade. In 2001, she received acupuncture treatment for a hand injury, and this in turn damaged nerves in her arm.