Emanuel Ax Plays All-Schubert Recital at Yale

Music lovers all over the world celebrated Franz Schubert’s 214th birthday on January 31. On Wednesday, February 23, music lovers in Connecticut can celebrate again when the renowned pianist Emanuel Ax gives an all-Schubert recital presented by the Yale School of Music. The event, which is part of the Horowitz Piano Series, will take place in Sprague Hall, 470 College Street, at 8 p.m.

Tickets range from $18 to $28, $10 for students. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit music.yale.edu or contact the Yale School of Music concert office at 203 432-4158.

The recital will open with Schubert’s Impromptus, Op. 142, a group of four pieces that Schumann once accused of being a “sonata in disguise.” Ax will then play the Sonata in A major, Op. 120, D. 664, known as the “little” sonata to distinguish it from another that Schubert wrote in the same key.

Ax will contrast this early work against the Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960, which closes the program. The last piano sonata Schubert wrote, it was only published 10 years after his death and was long neglected before being widely recognized as a major piece of the piano repertoire.

Born in Lvov, Poland, Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. He studied at the Juilliard School and Columbia University, capturing public attention in 1974 when he 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 coveted Avery Fisher Prize. Highlights of the current season include return visits to the orchestras of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Toronto as well as a number of recitals. Recent tours include performances in Asia with the New York Philharmonic and European tours with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Pittsburgh Symphony. Ax has been an exclusive Sony Classical recording artist since 1987. He has received Grammy Awards for the second and third volumes of Haydn’s piano sonatas and has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms cello sonatas.