Jun 29 2008
Emanuel Ax
I had the honour of meeting pianist Emanuel Ax for an interview last week. Ax is best known here for his extensive collaborations with the cellist Yoyo Ma, but really he’s a virtuoso player in his own right, considered to be one of the great pianists of his generation.
The one thing that struck me was how humble he was… one of the things he said was that maybe he stuck to piano because he didn’t have any other options open to him! But really, we’re lucky that he did stick it out with the piano – his playing easily ranks among the top 5 of the classical pianists that I’ve heard live. Listening to his play Chopin in the Esplanade Concert Hall was a magical and sometimes infuriating experience. Magical because of his technical skill, control, expressiveness and vivacity – and infuriating because as a lapsed pianist… I recognise how dastardly difficult Chopin can be and how much practice and innate talent you need to pull it off in a concert setting. “Manny”, as his friends call him, the down to earth New Yorker with a self-professed love of Shanghai dumplings is transformed to pianist extraordinaire Emanuel Ax when he sets his fingers down on the ivories. He made the complex runs in the piano concerto sound sublime, effortless, as if his hands were simply floating above the keys and willing them into beauty with some telekinetic power. Plus, he was generous with the encores too, playing an additional nocturne and waltz.
The feeling you get when you listen to a grand master like this is, oh, this is how Chopin is supposed to sound like – not the tinkling and banging that you suffered through during piano lessons – this almost other worldly lyricism and breathtaking momentum, this is what the composer meant when he was setting these notes down on the manuscript. It’s almost like getting a glimpse of a perfection beyond mere mortality.
2 responses so far
Joanne Leow is a producer-presenter with Channel NewsAsia. She is married with 2 young sons and spends her free time reading, writing, swimming, doing yoga and cooking up a storm.
Hi Joanne, I wish I had the opportunity to learn to play the piano. Besides expressing ones self creatively, it would guarantee that one never has to go hungry in the free world. Sadly though, I was not given the same chance my two elder brothers had. They were not serious learners according to our cousin, who was their lady instructor but too playful light hearted and childish as minors.
Sorry Joanne, I had to give way to the computer maintnance guy but I meant to say my parents probably thought I’d become egocentric. My brothers however, excelled in other fields as they grew up. I must say I gallantly learned to play the first two bars of a Church Hymn, while on holiday in Ootacamand with my family. I must have been 10 years old then and I remember standing on the frost for the first time absolutely thrilled, as we don’t have snow in Sri lanka. It was December and we took the blue mountain express from Coimbatore I think to Ooty. I know our flight from Ratmalana was to Trichinapalli in South India and we stayed at the hotel Ajantha. I have never eaten such delicious thosai again, as we had there. Any way getting back to the Nilgiris, we could have walked faster than the so called baby train express, unlike the wide bodied train from Trichy to Coimbatore but I must say the scenic beauty was splenderous. My elder brother sister and I went rowing on the lake and it was so beautiful and relaxing. When I returned to the hotel, I wrote myself a post card, which I have somewhere with my belongings. Must end now thanks for reading my blog.