Emanuel Ax with New York Philharmonic

New York Philharmonic Emanuel Ax, piano

Orchestral Series

Tuesday, July 28, 2026 at 6pm Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

Legendary pianist Emanuel Ax joins the NY Phil to make his Bravo! Vail debut in John Williams’ Piano Concerto—a work that was premiered in 2025, when the composer was 93. Also on the program is Gershwin’s An American in Paris, led by Stéphane Denève.

Stéphane Denève, conductor
Emanuel Ax, piano
Carolyn Pope, special guest conductor
Anne-Marie McDermott, narrator

DVOŘÁK Slavonic Dance in G minor, Op. 46, No. 8
BERNSTEIN Three Dance Episodes from On the Town
John WILLIAMS Piano Concerto
COPLAND Lincoln Portrait
GERSHWIN An American in Paris

Pre-Concert Talk: Join us at 5:10 PM in the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater Main Lobby for a preconcert lecture.

All artists, programs, and pricing subject to change.

Slavonic Dance in G minor, Op. 46, No. 8 (1878) ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)

When Antonín Dvořák’s
career finally ignited,
he was entering middle
age. His submissions to
a composers competition sponsored
by the Austrian government piqued
the interest of the influential music
critic Eduard Hanslick, who alerted
Johannes Brahms, who in turn alerted
his publisher, Fritz Simrock. Simrock
immediately published Dvořák’s
Moravian Duets, commissioned a
collection of Slavonic Dances, and
contracted a first option on all of
Dvořák’s new works. A Berlin newspaper
review of the Slavonic Dances
proclaimed: “Here is at last a hundredpercent talent and, what is more, a
completely natural talent. I consider the
Slavonic Dances to be a work which
will make its triumphant way through
the world in the same way as Brahms’
Hungarian Dances.” That initial set of
eight dances—Dvořák’s Op. 46, scored
for piano four-hands—paid off; it brought
the 37-year-old Dvořák his first author’s
fee, however modest, and it earned a
small fortune for the publisher. Within
months, Dvořák produced orchestral
versions of them, and in 1886 he
followed up with another set.

Three Dance Episode from On the Town Episodes (1944/46) LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-90)

In 1944, Leonard Bernstein and
choreographer Jerome Robbins created
the ballet Fancy Free, which depicted
three sailors on leave in New York City.
They then expanded it into a full-length
stage work, enlisting Betty Comden and
Adolph Green to create the book and
lyrics. On the Town similarly follows the
adventures of three sailors on leave in
New York—their astonishment at the
city itself and the romantic situations
in which they become entangled.
Following its premiere at the end of
December 1944, the piece lifted spirits
during the dark months when World
War II still had a distance to go before
American life could return to normal.
In the wake of the show’s success,
Bernstein crafted the Three Dance
Episodes, which he introduced in 1946.
In the first section, the shy serviceman
Gabey imagines himself as a great lover.
In the second, a girl falls for—and is
jilted by—another sailor, to the strains
of the tune “Lonely House.” The final
Episode bristles with the snazzy strains
of “New York, New York,” the biggest hit
in On the Town.

© James M. Keller

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2025) JOHN WILLIAMS (B. 1932)

Everyone knows John Williams as
the ne plus ultra of contemporary film
composers, but he also writes concert
music unconnected to films, including
a series of concertos—for flute, violin,
tuba, clarinet, bassoon, cello, trumpet,
horn, viola, harp, oboe, and now piano.
“Although my effort here is not a jazz
piece per se,” he says, “much of the
impetus to write it down has been
my memory of the particular ‘sound’
produced by three legendary jazz
pianists. ... The music is in no way an
attempt to serve as a portrait of each
of these artists, but merely to suggest
and remember the unique artistic
personalities of three men who greatly
inspired me.” The first movement evokes
Art Tatum; hearing him, the teenaged
Williams thought “the size of his sound
was awesome and reminded one of
Rachmaninoff.” The second movement
recalls Bill Evans, “a quiet and very
ethereal man.” To conclude, a nod
to Oscar Peterson, beginning with “a
bristling and famous ‘bebop’ passage
composed by whom we do not know
but often attributed to Oscar and to the
late Phineas Newborn.”

Lincoln Portrait (1942) AARON COPLAND (1900-90)

When, in 1941, the conductor André
Kostelanetz invited several American
composers to create a patriotic musical
portrait gallery of figures from American
history it was natural that he should
include Aaron Copland. “Some of
the personalities which occur to me,”
Kostelanetz wrote when he offered the
commission, “are George Washington,
Paul Revere, Walt Whitman, Robert
Fulton, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth. ... In
addition to approaching you on this
matter I am writing to Virgil Thomson
and Jerome Kern.” “My first choice was
Whitman,” Copland recalled, “but when
Kern chose Mark Twain, Kostelanetz
requested that I pick a statesman
rather than another literary figure.” So
it was that Copland set about writing
Lincoln Portrait. “After reading through
his speeches and writings,” Copland
continued, “I was able to choose a few
excerpts that were particularly apposite
to America’s situation in 1942. I avoided
the temptation to quote only well
known passages, permitting myself the
luxury of only one from a world-famous
speech”—that exception being from the
Gettysburg Address.

An American in Paris (1928) GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937)

In the spring of 1928, George
Gershwin took his fifth trip to Europe—
along with his sister, Frances; his
brother, Ira; and Ira’s wife, Leonore—and
it was there that he worked on his tone
poem An American in Paris. Gershwin
therefore was an actual American in
Paris for part of the time that he labored
over the piece, and Ira reported that the
entire “blues” section of An American
in Paris was composed in the Hotel
Majestic in that city, where a visitor
recalled finding him experimenting
with the sound of various car horns.
Other parts, however, were written in
New York City (where he had sketched
a good deal of the piece before he set
sail), in Vienna, and (after his return from
abroad) at a farm in Connecticut; and
all of the orchestration was carried out
in the United States. “My purpose here,”
Gershwin explained, “is to portray the
impressions of an American visitor in
Paris as he strolls about the city, listens
to the various street noises, and absorbs
the French atmosphere.”

Artist Biographies

Stéphane Denève

Photo Credit: Genevieve Caron

Emanuel Ax

Photo Credit: Nigel Parry

Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize. Emanuel Ax was recently named the 2026 Musical America Artist of the Year.

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of his first appearance with the orchestra, the 2025-26 season begins with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Carnegie Hall on October 31. Fall also includes an Asian tour that will take him to Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong. Following the world premiere at Tanglewood in summer 2025, the concerto written for him by John Williams will have its Boston Symphony subscription debut in January with the NY premiere one month later with New York Philharmonic. As a guest artist he will return to orchestras in Dallas, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Charleston, Madison, Naples and New Jersey. In recital he can be heard in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Santa Barbara, Des Moines, Cedar Falls, Schenectady and Princeton. An extensive European tour will include concerts in Munich, Prague, Berlin, Rome and Torino.

Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. He has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMY-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004-05 season Mr. Ax contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).

Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University. For more information about Mr. Ax’s career, please visit EmanuelAx.com.

PLEASE NOTE: ALL PROGRAM BIOGRAPHIES MUST INCLUDE REFERENCE TO MR. AX’S EXCLUSIVE RECORDING CONTRACT WITH SONY CLASSICAL