A & E

Emanuel Ax, who came to the Pittsburgh Symphony's rescue three weeks ago when fellow pianist Alfred Brendel was forced to cancel because of illness, is back this week to play a concerto by his musical first love with one of his favorite orchestras in one of his favorite places.

He says his substitution for Brendel "was kind of a crazy thing. I know Brendel a little bit. I'm also a fan of his. I missed both concerts he gave in New York because I was working elsewhere. I had the weekend off and made plans to come hear him play."

Then he received two calls at home in New York City. First, Brendel told him he wouldn't be playing because he was sick. Then, a half-hour later, Bob Moir, the symphony's vice president for artistic planning, called; Ax's March visit to Heinz Hall moved from a seat in the audience to one onstage.

Concerts today, Friday and Saturday at Heinz Hall, Downtown, will feature Ax performing Frederic Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor with guest conductor Charles Dutoit and the Pittsburgh Symphony. The program also includes Claude Debussy's Sarabande and Dance and ballet "Jeux," and Leos Janacek's "Sinfonietta."

The concerts will be Ax's 22nd appearance since his debut here in 1978.

"I have a lot of friends in the orchestra," he says. "Every time I come, we try to make an evening when a bunch of the musicians and I go for a big Chinese meal. One of the pleasures of coming back to a city over time is you do get to make friends and feel like you're part of the family, which is just wonderful. It's a great orchestra."

Ax recalls that he began playing Chopin when he was 7 or 8. "I'm Polish by birth. All Polish pianists play Chopin, quite apart from him being a large part of every pianist's life, really.

"I certainly love Chopin as much as any composer. He was probably my first love in the sense that I also grew up with (Arthur) Rubinstein, who was known to me as 'the Chopin pianist.' He played a lot else marvelously, too."

Ax's family moved to Canada in 1959 and settled in New York City in 1961. After studying at the Juilliard School of Music and Columbia University, he began winning piano competitions. But his career really took off after winning first prize in the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in 1974.

"After I won, he was very kindly. When he came to New York several times a year, he always found a little time for me. We had a few lessons, among them the Chopin F minor Concerto. He had a lot of stuff to say, unbelievably exact and instructive. I got to have dinner with him a few times, too. I was moving in high circles," says the modest pianist.

Chopin and Debussy "are the most astonishingly original composers I know, Ax says. "With Beethoven, you see it's incredible music, but you can trace connections to Mozart and Haydn writing at the time. Chopin comes from Warsaw and explodes on the scene. It's a pretty revolutionary way of hearing music."

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