Emanuel Ax Plays Mozart and Mahler with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood
A concert pairing two composers at their most intimate—with Erin Morley as soprano in Mahler's child-like, unsettling Fourth.
Soprano Erin Morley. Photo by Chris Gonz.
July 11, 8pm | Lenox, MA
The Boston Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons opens this Tanglewood program with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25, featuring Emanuel Ax at the keyboard, and closes with Mahler's Symphony No. 4, with soprano Erin Morley joining for the final movement.
The Mozart "K. 503" is one of the composer's grandest piano concertos—written in C major in 1786, the same year as The Marriage of Figaro, it has a ceremonial weight that distinguishes it from the more intimate D minor or the brilliance of the "K. 491." Ax, born in Lviv to Polish-Jewish parents who survived the Nazi camps and raised in Winnipeg before studying at Juilliard, has been one of the central figures in classical piano for fifty years.
He won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in 1974, the Avery Fisher Prize in 1979, and has accumulated multiple Grammy Awards both as a soloist and in chamber music recordings with Yo-Yo Ma. Musical America named him Artist of the Year for 2025-2026, a season in which he has also been performing the new piano concerto John Williams wrote specifically for him, which had its world premiere at Tanglewood last summer.
He met Yo-Yo Ma in the Juilliard cafeteria when they were both young students goofing off from practice; they have been performing together ever since.
Mahler's Fourth sits apart from the rest of his symphonies. Scored for a relatively modest orchestra, it has an almost deceptive simplicity — particularly in the first three movements, which glide through a kind of fairytale landscape of bells, folk tunes, and warm strings. The final movement pulls the curtain back: soprano Erin Morley sings a song from the collection "Des Knaben Wunderhorn," in which a child describes heaven as a place of eternal feasting, where Herod himself becomes a butcher and John the Baptist beheads a lamb.
The program is preceded by a 6pm Prelude Concert of chamber music by students of the Tanglewood Music Center, free with a ticket to the main concert.
Koussevitzky Music Shed, Tanglewood, 297 West St., Lenox, MA. Tickets at bso.org.
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After a decade of writing for RI (along with many other publications and organizations) Jamie took over as editor in 2025. He has a masters in journalism from NYU, a wonderful wife, two kids and a Carolina dog named Zelda.
