Ax stuns Chan Centre

DANA SCHLANGER

When Leila Getz, artistic director of the Vancouver Recital Society (VRS), took the stage at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts to thank the sponsors and the audience, she was beaming at the packed house and happily acknowledging it. No doubt about it, the Emanuel Ax recital was one of the highlights of the VRS season. Since people were familiar with his work, he having performed in Vancouver before, they made sure they were not going to miss the event – for the Polish-born (to Holocaust survivors parents), Winnipeg-raised and New York-educated pianist is definitely an event.

We have different images for the different musicians we admire and enjoy; as far as pianists go, Radu Lupu conjures the memory of his inward-looking, spellbinding musical narratives, Alfred Brendel that of intellectual crispness and integrity, and Murray Perahia that of

poetic insight and dream-like sensitivity. Within the gallery of the greats, Ax is the pianist for all seasons, at home with almost any repertoire, bringing music close to the listener, opening it up as a natural, flowing experience. He engages his audience with a sense of warm comfort, not stunning them, but, in a way, seducing them.

Anyone who listens to his CBC Radio show The Concerto According to Manny will probably know exactly what I mean: this artist with a phenomenal international career, who has performed with all major symphony orchestras and played recitals in the most celebrated concert halls of the world, has a humility and true joy that is contagious when approaching music. With characteristic humor, he invites listeners into the real, intimate, often surprisingly mundane world of piano work; he discusses and helps them make it their own. Similarly, when he steps on stage and starts playing, his understated, jovial and unassuming presence makes listeners feel "we're making music together."

That was the feeling at the Chan Centre when Ax started playing Beethoven's Sonata Op. 2 No. 2. The theme had a felted quality, a sense of the familiar being deliberately underplayed. In a way, we were all invited into the pianist's living room and he was playing an "informal" concert – some people may have felt disappointed by this experience, because it lacked the sense of "authority" that sometimes comes with listening to a great artist on stage.

The evening's program centred around Beethoven sonatas and Schumann character pieces, and it was a really interesting choice, because the two more abstract Beethoven sonatas framed the flightier, more visual, almost graphic Schumann pieces. Ax approached the Schumann Humoreske Op. 20 with the same almost classical ease and grace that characterized the recital: like fleeting images out of a moving carriage, the contrasting, swiftly changing segments of the piece conjured the various moods of a story. This atmosphere continued after the break in the youthful "Papillons" ("Butterflies"), which Schumann conceived as a series of carnival scenes and dances inspired by a highly popular novel of the time, The Years of Indiscretion by Jean-Paul Richter.

The highlight of the recital was, without any doubt, the "Appassionata" Sonata Op. 57 by Beethoven. This is the kind of piece that makes or breaks a pianist, and Ax left all joviality aside for this powerful, dark, often overwhelming work. He brought forth the epic quality of the music relentlessly, with great force, moving ahead as if compelled by the deep undercurrents of passion contained therein. With "Appassionata," Ax took our breath away ... and the packed house exploding in ovations at the end returned the favor.

Dana Schlanger is a Vancouver freelance writer and director of the Dena Wosk School of Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

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