Due to an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response, Newport Classical has added a second performance by GRAMMY® Award-winning pianist Emanuel Ax on Wednesday, October 9, 2024 at 7:30 pm at Newport Classical Recital Hall.
The previously announced performance on October 8 is at capacity.
Tickets are available now at www.newportclassical.org.
More Background
Hailed for his “thoughtful, lyrical, lustrous” playing by The Washington Post, the acclaimed American pianist will make his Newport Classical debut in a solo recital program of Beethoven and Schumann, entitled Fantasies. Paired with the intimacy of Newport Classical’s home venue, known for its striking architecture and excellent acoustics, Emanuel Ax brings his “youthful brio, incisive rhythm, bountiful imagination, [and] delicacy” (The New York Times) to downtown Newport for two memorable evenings of music. Tickets are available now for the added October 9 performance.
Ax’s performances feature Beethoven’s beloved “Moonlight Sonata” and his Piano Sonata No. 13 alongside Schumann’s Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 and his Fantasy in C, Op. 17. The program also includes John Corigliano’s Fantasia on an Ostinato, which draws inspiration from the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. These concerts are made possible through the generous support of Joan Sweeney and Jim Godbout.
“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome the incomparable Emanuel Ax to our home venue for these very special performances, which promise to be intimate evenings of exceptional classical music, an experience Newport Classical is proud to be recognized for all year long,” said executive director Gillian Fox.
Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize.
His 2024-25 season begins with a continuation of the Beethoven For Three touring and recording project with partners Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma which takes them to European festivals including BBC Proms, Dresden, Hamburg, Vienna and Luxembourg. As guest soloist he will appear during the New York Philharmonic’s opening week which will mark his 47th annual visit to the orchestra. During the season he will return to the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, National, San Diego, Nashville, and Pittsburgh symphonies, and Rochester Philharmonic. A fall recital tour from Toronto and Boston moves west to include San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles culminating in the spring in Chicago and his annual Carnegie Hall appearance. A special project in duo with clarinetist Anthony McGill takes them from the west coast through the midwest to Georgia and Carnegie Hall and in chamber music with Itzhak Perlman and Friends to Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco. An extensive European tour will include concerts in Paris, Oslo, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Warsaw, and Israel.
Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. He has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMY®Award-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004-05 season Ax contributed to an International EMMY® Award-winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).
Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University.
