Pianist Ax Offers Focused and Mellow Pleasures at O.C. Recital

Two of Chopin’s more beloved waltzes proved the highlight of Emanuel Ax’s well-attended solo recital at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Tuesday.

What are usually considered the second and third of the Polish composer’s Waltzes--Opus 34, No. 1, and Opus 34, No. 2--but more commonly remembered as those in A flat and A minor, illuminated Ax’s thoroughly satisfying program. The 48-year-old Polish-born pianist, a familiar visitor to Southern California over the years but here making only his second OCPAC appearance, let them sing and in so doing created many beautiful moments.

But Ax is mostly thoughtful and mellow; he doesn’t project a sense of high energy. The rest of the program was admirable but not thrilling. Ax brought to Schubert’s final Sonata, the one in B flat, D. 960, all the concentration and focus one expects, but not its grandeur. Ax sees the work not as a heroic arch, but as a succession of poems, the first extended in scope, the second inward and thoughtful, and so on.

Nor was his second-half Chopin group epic or heroic. There was virtuosity and technique to burn in the opening B-minor Scherzo, but no grandstanding--just a clear flow of musical ideas. The way he played the waltzes served as a reminder that these gems do not deserve the neglect they too often receive.

The closing Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise, an Ax specialty, was quietly meditative, despite outward show. Ax, the least extroverted of our major pianists, is like the speaker who tells wonderful stories without ever using the first-person pronoun.

The single encore, in response to a loud ovation--even louder than the incessant coughing heard throughout the evening--was Chopin’s Mazurka in C sharp minor, Opus 6, No. 2.