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SINGAPORE: Celebrated pianist Emanuel Ax made his maiden appearance in Singapore on Friday in opening the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s (SSO) new 2008/2009 season at the Esplanade Concert Hall.
The concert was a special collaboration with the SSO and conductor Maestro Lan Shui, in a repertoire of Chopin's Second Piano Concerto.
The award winning Polish-Canadian pianist, born in Ukraine to parents who survived the Nazi occupation, is critically acclaimed in the Classical music scene.
A bit of a child prodigy, he started playing the piano at the age of seven. He went on to train at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York before becoming a renowned name in the Classical scene, winning seven Grammy Awards to his name.
In an exclusive interview with Channel NewsAsia, the humble 59-year-old musician said getting where he is now depended more on luck than anything else, including talent.
"You have to be very lucky to make a career as a concert performer," said the father of two, who lives in New York City with his wife.
"You have to practice hard and play well but a lot of luck is involved. I always knew that I pretty much wanted to play music but I didn’t know I would really be lucky enough to be a performer so that’s an extra bonus, I guess."
The pianist has a rather unusual trait of wanting his listeners to applaud not just during interludes but in between movements as well.
"I don’t know who invented that you are not allowed to applaud between movements but when pieces of Beethoven or Chopin or Mozart were written and played, certainly people always did what they wanted, nobody said you were not to applaud," he explained.
"So I think people should just react the way they want to. It is very unfortunate when something ends brilliantly and people feel that we are not allowed to applaud because it’s not over yet. So it’s much more realistic, really, when people applaud between movements."
The veteran musician is also a particular supporter of contemporary classical music, and has performed works not just by traditional composers, but also works by diverse figures such as Hans Werner Henze, Joseph Schwantner and John Adams.
"I think we need to do music that is being written while we are alive," he said. "If not, we’d be a little like an art museum that doesn’t hang anything after 1910; and we’d be kind of a boring and irrelevant art museum...
"And it’s wonderful that really famous performers such as Yo-Yo Ma and Lang Lang are actually doing music that is being written now. Because I think their names would bring people into the hall and people would come out liking the music. And that is what we want to achieve."
And despite great achievements and breakthroughs in the music scene, the musician hopes he will remembered for more than just his music.
"I hope I can bring pleasure to people with my music right now and when I think about my legacy, I think it's much more about being good family person and having people think I'm a decent person," he said.
- CNA/yb
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