Emanuel Ax

piano

Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975, he won the Michaels Award presented by Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize.

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of his first appearance with the orchestra, Ax’s 2025/26 season began with The Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. This fall also includes an tour to Asia that will take him to Tokyo, Seoul, and Hong Kong. Following its world premiere at Tanglewood in summer 2025, the concerto written for him by John Williams will have its Boston Symphony subscription debut in January, with the New York premiere one month later with the New York Philharmonic. As a guest artist he returns to orchestras in Dallas, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Charleston, Madison, Naples, and New Jersey. In recital he can be heard in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Santa Barbara, Des Moines, Cedar Falls, Schenectady, and Princeton. An extensive European tour will include concerts in Munich, Prague, Berlin, Rome, and Turin.

Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987, and following the success of Brahms: The Piano Trios with Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma, the three launched an ambitious, multiyear project to record all the Beethoven trios and symphonies arranged for trio, of which the first three discs have been released. Ax has received Grammy Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004/05 season Ax contributed to an International Emmy Award–winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).

Emanuel Ax is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary Doctor of Music degrees from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University.