Mozart Dances
May 08, 2007
Emanuel Ax - Leader of the dance
By: Jed Distler, from Gramophone, London
The pianist joins forces with choreographer Mark Morris for one of the Mozart year's more experimental collaborations.
There's a trend in dance concerts where the performers warm up on stage as the audience filters in. The renowned American choreographer Mark Morris sometimes does this with his company, but not for Mozart Dances, an evening-length work encompassing three large-scale pieces, that premiered in August during Lincoln Center's annual Mostly Mozart Festival. However, when I entered the New York State Theater for the run's final performance, I was surprised to see piano soloist Emanuel Ax warming up alongside the Mostly Mozart orchestra members, refining the D major Two-Piano Sonata's tricky phrases with his wife Yoko Nozaki at the second piano, and spot-checking various runs and roulades from the two concertos bracketing the sonata (the F major, K413, and B flat major, K595). Occasionally Manny (as friends and colleagues know him) looked up from the orchestra pit to greet a well-wisher, or bantered with his page-turner.
