Music Reviews : Emanuel Ax Draws on Operatic Themes

Whether by design or happenstance, much of what Emanuel Ax played Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion had its basis in song.

There was the ethereally spun out “O terra addio” from “Aida” and, in contrast, the nearly raucous swagger of the Quartet from “Rigoletto”--in Liszt paraphrases of those two Verdi operas.

And one could hear Lenski’s Aria, stolen from Tchaikovsky, in the same composer’s “Vallee d’Obermann,” as well as faint intimations of “West Side Story” in Leonard Bernstein’s “Touches.”

But because the pianist is a supreme virtuoso, the kind who operates with surgical precision and always keeps a score’s structure sharply focused, the floweriness of his subjects never led him across the line to indulgence.

What he does musically is unassailable and how he does it--with a controlled temperament and pristine technique--brings satisfaction at a deep level.

For all the florid, arpeggio-driven writing of the Liszt pieces--which, by the way, Ax played with sincere appreciation--the pianist managed to pick out the kernels of melodic delicacy, holding them up for all to admire and rendering them with a feathery touch.

He completed the Romantic agenda with Schumann’s “Carnaval,” taking the cycle at a resolutely fast tempo, often shaving down the scale to its softest range and putting on display those facets of glittering elegance sometimes lost.

But while one could grasp the characterfulness of the 24 pieces, as he fashioned them, their dramatic import was not always accessible.

No such complaint could be made of the program opener, Haydn’s B-minor Sonata, No. 16 in the Hoboken edition. Here Ax could allow his marvelous facility for laying out structural design to encompass drama as well.

Indeed, expressive definition seemed to come from his ability to sound subtle changes in weighting and to clarify what in other hands often seems like note-clotted textures. He did all this with a surpassing vigor, geniality and refinement.