Emanuel Ax
piano
Emanuel Ax has been a welcome guest of the Berliner Philharmoniker since his debut with the orchestra in 1988. In the 2005/06 season, he was particularly closely associated with the orchestra as its Pianist in Residence.
Ax, who was born in 1949 to Polish parents in Lviv, Ukraine, studied under Mieczyław Munz at the prestigious Juilliard School after his family moved to the United States. At the age of 25, he gained international attention when he won the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv. Five years later, he also won the Avery Fisher Prize in New York. Ax regularly appears in international music capitals as well as at renowned festivals as a concert soloist with top orchestras, in piano recitals, and as a chamber musician. He was a duo partner of Isaac Stern for many years, and has worked alongside artists such as Peter Serkin, Yefim Bronfman and Itzhak Perlman. Today, he performs primarily with Yo-Yo Ma and Leonidas Kavakos. Emanuel Ax’s repertoire includes not only the major works of the Classical and Romantic periods, but also numerous contemporary compositions. He has premiered works by John Adams, Christopher Rouse and Krzysztof Penderecki, as well as the piano concerto by HK Gruber commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation, which he premiered with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 2017. Emanuel Ax is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds honorary doctorates from Yale and Columbia Universities.
