Pianist Ax Brings Skill, Polish to Schubert-Liszt Program

Until its super-brilliant conclusion in Liszt’s “Mephisto” Waltz No. 1, Emanuel Ax’s latest Dorothy Chandler Pavilion recital on Sunday emerged beautifully wrought but self-effacing.

Ax’s polished execution seemed to be keeping the many difficulties and technical challenges in his Liszt-Schubert agenda a secret. He remains the opposite of a grandstander.

The veteran Polish-born pianist chose another connoisseur’s program for this appearance: two of Schubert’s more neglected sonatas, a brace of Liszt transcriptions of Schubert songs and a final Liszt group starting with two of the “Valses-Caprices d’apres Franz Schubert” called “Soirees de Vienne.”

It was a generous sampling and most handsomely laid out; though he seemed to tire at the very end, Ax’s technical apparatus proved again a model of ease and efficiency, his interpretive stance musical in every wise, his tone suave and seductive. He plays the piano like a master, with authority and probity.

Still, this whole package grew long, despite the beauties of its detailing. The two sonatas, for instance, both written in 1817, proved redundant, like twins arriving at a party dressed alike.

The song-transcriptions, admirable in themselves, constituted a sonata-like entity, with five contrasting moods and characteristics, so that, subsequently, the three waltzes at the end became anticlimactic.

Nonetheless, all the playing was splendid, particularly the limpid “Soirees de Vienne” excerpts and the song-transcriptions, two of which (items from “Die Schone Mullerin”) Ax had first played here at his local debut recital, in 1975.

* Emanuel Ax plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the American Youth Symphony at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, March 2. (213) 365-3500. With the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ax will play Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto March 6, 7, 8 and 9, also at the Pavilion. (213) 365-3500.