Word: ax
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Emanuel Ax, piano...
...summer concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) at Tanglewood have made a practice of bringing together exceptional performers. Last Saturday's program was no exception, as André Previn and Emanuel Ax joined the orchestra...
After intermission, Ax joined the orchestra for a predictably fine performance of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major. Brahms did not begin composing this concerto in four movements as a symphony, as he had with his first concerto, but the piece lacks none of the grandeur of the symphonic form...
...Ax's first phrases, following the famous horn solo, did not contain the emphasis usually accorded to them; in the context of historical performances, they appeared routine. But momentousness was, in general, not his goal. The defining trait of Ax's playing on Saturday was a striking immediacy. Rather than using time to create intense emotional drama, as Sviatoslav Richter did in his landmark 1960 performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorg, Ax manifested an incessant urge to build in an efficient and almost austere manner...
...Auden reduced the mythic giant logger to a booming invisible voice, sounding like a cross between Walter Cronkite and Big Brother, that directs the taming of the wilderness. His minions include a creatively frustrated egghead, a hot-tempered muscleman, a pair of winsome young lovers and all manner of ax-swinging loggers and their "wimmin." Inexplicably absent is Babe the Blue...