Emanuel Ax maintains a deep affection for Brahms

1/19

In this downtown Los Angeles mural, a young girl swings from the word “PARK,” formerly written as “PARKING.” Just down the block from this area, a downtown resident group is looking to find a little more than $6 million to transform a parking lot into a community park with a playground. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

2/19

“Kissing Coppers,” a life-size portrait of two policemen sharing a kiss, is one of Banksy’s most famous artworks. The piece was created in 2004 on the walls of a pub in Brighton, England. It was then carved from the wall and sold to an anonymous buyer in Miami for $575,000 in 2014. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)

3/19

A visitor to Paris’ Drouot auction house looks at Banksy’s “Very Little Helps” prior to an October auction. The piece sold for about $7,200. (Thiabult Camus / Associated Press)

4/19

After a daylong hiatus “due to police activity,” Banksy stenciled an image of a man leaning on a wall, holding a batch of falling flowers. The creation went up on the side of the Hustler Club in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan. (John Moore / Getty Images)

5/19

This pop-up exhibition depicting the Occupy movement was a collaboration between Banksy and Brazilian twin street artists Os Gemeos. A Fox news report claimed Banksy paid $50,000 to hang his work from this property in New York, but Banksy said the space was donated by the owner. (Michael Loccisano / Getty Images)

6/19

As part of Banksy’s monthlong residency in New York, Banksy found clever use of a privately owned Brooklyn street scape. The artist drew the silhouettes of two kimono-clad women on a circular-like object, as if the pair were sitting on a bridge carrying parasols near a cherry blossom tree. (Justin Lane / EPA)

7/19

Banksy created a mini-tribute to the Twin Towers on the streets of Tribeca. The image portrays two buildings against the New York skyline, one accented with an orange chrysanthemum.
(Jason Szenes / EPA )

8/19

Trying art in motion, Banksy conceived a slaughterhouse delivery truck replete with squealing stuffed animals. The farmyard pigs and sheeps are on their way to death. (Andrew Gombert / EPA )

9/19

Seen through a fence in New York City, Banksy’s trio of stampeding horses wear night-vision goggles while a group of men kneel before them. A tape recording of a 2007 U.S. airstrike plays in the background, revealing the killing of two children and a Reuters journalist. (Andrew Burton / Getty Images)

10/19

Located across the street from the First Ukrainian Assembly of God, this piece is based on a 1950s image by photographer Berni Schoenfield, depicting a Jesuit priest at a Martyr’s Shrine. A portion of the original piece has been defaced by vandals. (Jason Szenes / EPA )

11/19

In this aerosol artwork spotted in Queens, New York, a man begins to scrub away the phrase “What we do in life echoes in Eternity” -- a quote picked up from the film “Gladiator.” (Jason Szenes / EPA)

12/19

Stenciled on the streets of New York, a dog is seen urinating on a fire hydrant, with a thought bubble reading “You Complete Me...” (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

13/19

In the the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, a heart-shaped helium balloon is covered in bandages. The piece was defaced with red spray paint shortly after being completed. Banksy has painted a famous heart-shaped balloon before in his 2012 London piece “Girl With a Balloon.” (Andrew Burton / Getty Images)

14/19

In this New York Lower East Side piece, Banksy added the words “The Musical” to existing graffiti that read “Playground Mob.” (Andrew Burton / Getty Images)

15/19

Banksy wrote the words “This is my New York accent” beneath a highly stylized “...normally I write like this.” Like several other pieces, this one was later vandalized by graffiti. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

16/19

Banksy’s graffiti mural “Love Is in the Air” illustrates a black and white masked protester about to throw a bouquet of colorful flowers. The piece was up for auction at Bonhams in London. (Justin Tallis / AFP / Getty Images)

17/19

“Flower Girl” is a 9-by-8 foot mural on brick, originally located at an LA gas station. The owner of that gas station cut out that section of the wall and brought it to an auction. The mural depicts a girl holding a basket of flowers as a security camera blossoms on top of its stem. ( Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images )

18/19

Seen in Bristol, England, this large piece portrays three police men approaching a teddy bear with a lit cocktail in his hand. For about nine years, the piece remained untouched but was then defaced with red paint. (Matt Cardy / Getty Images)

19/19

At the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Banksy premiered his film “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” about a man who desperately wanted to create a documentary on Banksy. During the fest in Park City, Utah, Banksy created an image of a filmmaker zooming in on a pink flower. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

By David Mermelstein, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Jan. 10, 2014 10:30 AM PT

NEW YORK — On a drizzly afternoon last month, the pianist Emanuel Ax crossed 57th Street and repeated a short journey he has made many times, walking between Carnegie Hall and Steinway Hall, two pillars of this city’s musical life. He had just concluded a video interview at the former, where he has performed regularly for decades. Yet he was still eager to talk, arriving at the latter — the flagship store of his preferred instrument — with Brahms on his mind.

“It’s such complicated and deep stuff,” Ax said of Brahms’ music, not meaning to sound solemn. Wearing a blue sport coat, black shirt and charcoal trousers, he was characteristically amiable and authoritative while sitting in a room that was once the office of Henry Z. Steinway, the last in his family to run the company. “I think you can just play Brahms forever. I think he’s right up there with the other big guys: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach. You don’t get tired of the Beethoven concertos or sonatas, and I think that’s true for Brahms’ music as well.”

Brahms looms large for the 64-year-old pianist because the composer’s music lies at the heart of several concerts he is giving in four American cities in the coming months. In Los Angeles, where Ax has appeared regularly since 1975, the Los Angeles Philharmonic will present four programs at Disney Hall under the title “Emanuel Ax’s Brahms Project.” The first runs Friday through Sunday and features him performing Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, with the young English conductor Robin Ticciati leading the orchestra.

CRITICS’ PICKS: What to watch, where to go, what to eat

The series concludes at the beginning of May, when Ax and the Philharmonic perform the composer’s Second Piano Concerto, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting. In between, come recitals with the mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter (Jan. 21) and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma (Feb. 25).

This largesse of Brahms may seemed ill-timed for concertgoers accustomed to seeing anniversaries drive such programming. The last major milestone relating to Brahms came in 1997, the centenary of his death, and the next one, the 200th anniversary of his birth, doesn’t arrive till 2033. But that didn’t concern Ax, who was asked to suggest a composer to follow his joint tributes to Chopin and Schumann four years ago — each of whom had a bicentenary at that time. Those concerts paired works by Chopin and Schumann with new music, and Ax decided to repeat the pattern, asking a different group of living composers to write pieces that would complement Brahms.

“I suggested Brahms just because I’m a huge Brahms fan,” Ax said, emphatically rejecting the idea that the composer had become passé, but adding: “There’s a feeling that you have to be profound and slow when you do certain pieces of Brahms, but we need to remember that he wrote some of this music when he was much younger than we are.”

PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times

The new works, written for various combinations of performers, are by the Australian Brett Deanand the Americans Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly and Andrew Norman, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s composer-in-residence.

“I still haven’t seen Andrew’s piece,” confided Ax, born in Poland but a New Yorker since his teens. “So it’s a bit of a panic, but all new music is a bit of a panic. You get it when you get it, and you practice it when you can. I’m getting old now, and it’s getting harder to learn new works — though I’ve heard many great pianists at an advanced age, and they sounded great. The most amazing, in that sense, was Arthur Rubinstein. In his 70s, he sounded like a young man, full of sap.”

If Ax has concerns about his abilities dimming, others do not, including Muhly, whose piece “So Many Things” was written for Ax and Von Otter. “He’s a sort of childhood hero of mine,” Muhly said of the pianist, who is widely admired for his warmth, taste and lyricism at the keyboard. “What I like about his playing is that he’s not scared of virtuosic patterns. But I’m more interested in his commitment to being faithful as an interpreter. He knows exactly what is required of every piece he plays. And you get the sense he’s a wonderful collaborator — that he’s totally committed, no matter what the music.”

If anyone knows Ax as a collaborator, it’s Ma, his friend since their student days at the Juilliard School and subsequently a favored colleague. “We were cheeseburger friends,” said the cellist, recalling their long-ago meetings in the school cafeteria. “Manny was obviously smart and also nice and told a lot of jokes — those were some of my first impressions. And guess what? That’s still my impression.

ART: Can you guess the high price?

“He is always involved in the whole piece, always trying to find how things fit in. He’s not obsessive in his management of detail, but he’ll think deeply about it. His approach is that it doesn’t matter how much you know or what you’ve done before; it’s what you bring to the moment. How present are you? He always says that he’s so lucky to be a musician, because you’re always a student, always learning.”

Ax’s affection for Brahms runs deep — back to his teenage years, when he was wearing out LPs of Rubinstein playing the Second Concerto. “I fell in love with Brahms from that time on,” he said. “I did a lot of chamber music when I was young, and there’s nothing like Brahms chamber music. The proof is that there’s nothing obscure; it’s all played all the time.”

But Brahms also strikes a deeper chord in the pianist, one beyond just the notes. “He had an amazing life,” Ax said. “Professionally, he was incredibly successful, renowned in his time. At the same time, he had a personal life that was so sad and depressing. He was beautiful in his youth, but he fell in love with a woman that he just couldn’t have,” the pianist Clara Schumann.

“On top of that, he worshiped her husband,” the composer Robert Schumann. “It’s such a sad and romantic 19th century story. And I’ve always felt bad for him. I thought someone who wrote such wonderful music and was such a wonderful man to so many other musicians deserved better. So I’ve always had a great sympathy for him on the personal side. It’s been a lifelong love.”

calendar@latimes.com

Emanuel Ax maintains a deep affection for Brahms

More to Read

More From the Los Angeles Times

Most Read in Music