By: Ryan Sederquist
Emanuel Ax has spent a half-century performing masterworks most people couldn't dream of playing. Still, something about his down-to-earth approach comes across as refreshingly human. There's precision — albeit “not perfection,” the Polish-American pianist emphasized — and an automaticity to the pianist's production, of course. But when he sits down in Vail on Tuesday to perform the piano concerto John Williams wrote for him, Ax won't enter any esoteric musical mindset in an attempt to channel the aura of the three other pianists it honors.
