HOUSTON CHRONICLE
MAY 21, 2018
BY ERIC SKELLY
The Houston Symphony brought its 2017-18 subscription season to a close this past weekend with a program that offered a study in contrasts.
As heard in Jones Hall, the program offered a star guest soloist in two works by Mozart in a purist, traditional approach to performing classical music. But after the intermission, the shattering innovation of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” inspired the Houston Symphony to try some innovating of its own by way of employing multimedia to reinterpret Stravinsky’s audacious score. While the two approaches to performance were dramatically disparate, each proved apt for the works they sought to illuminate. Read more …
THE NEW YORK TIMES
FEBRUARY 21, 2018
BY DAVID ALLEN
Classical superstars have long come together to form chamber groups, and there is a particularly distinguished tradition of doing that for Brahms’s piano trios. Just scan the internet for Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Feuermann, say, or Myra Hess, Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals. Sometimes celebrity players struggle to curb their egos for the intimacy of group work — but when they do, the results can be stunning. Read more …
THE ARTS DESK
SEPTEMBER 9, 2017
BY GAVIN DIXON
*Excerpt*
“I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that Emanuel Ax (pictured below) and Michael Tilson Thomas are long-time collaborators. An intuitive sense of communication between the two was evident throughout the Mozart 14th Piano Concerto, allowing the pianist to make some dramatic tempo and dynamic changes, at a moment’s notice, knowing that the orchestra would always keep step. Read more …
By Bernard Jacobson | The Seattle Times
When Emanuel Ax plays Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto, any participating orchestra’s principal cellist can expect to be accorded an equal place in the spotlight. It was heartwarming, at Benaroya Hall on Thursday evening, to observe the pianist’s insistent inclusion of Efe Baltacigil in his acceptance of the audience’s plaudits. Read more …
By Mark Swed | Los Angeles Times
When John Adams was a young composer and conductor in San Francisco in the early ’70s, he would often perform the experimental music of John Cage and other radicals, which was the hip thing to do at the time. But he has said that all that avant-garde business could leave him musically dissatisfied, and he’d go home and put on recordings of late Beethoven string quartets.
Read more …
