Emanuel Ax is on top form for his first solo CD in many years. In contrast to the genial, well-played and slightly cautious Eroica Variations he recorded for RCA in the 1970s he now presents a tougher-skinned, more dynamically varied and assiduously unified view of this wonderful score. The devil is in the detail: notice, for example, how nimbly he differentiates Var 2’s legato and detached phrasings, or his pinpoint control of Var 4’s momentary crescendos and the effortless left-hand broken octaves in Var 6. His flexible, long-lined parsing of Var 5 and rock-steady, sharply accented way with the canonic Var 6 underline the music’s foreshadowing of Brahms’s beloved cross-rhythmic phrases. The final Largo variation adds up to a masterclass in how to give the utmost variety and refinement to the decorative right-hand writing within as steady a basic pulse as possible. Ax’s measured pace for the concluding fugue allows him to scale the dynamics, gauge the climaxes and articulate the double notes for maximum impact and textural variety, rather than fall prey to the inevitable blurring that occurs when one reads Beethoven’s allegro con brio directive as ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’.

Similar observations apply to Ax’s Haydn F minor Variations, where the exquisitely shaded chains of trills, subtle colour-changes and chamber-like repartee between both hands is further enhanced by one of the best-regulated and engineered Yamaha CFX concert grands it has been my pleasure to experience.

Ax scrubs Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes clean of certain long-encrusted interpretative ‘traditions’. While many pianists turn the opening theme into a heavy dirge, Ax’s lighter, faster, more direct approach is a breath of fresh air. He lets Etude 2’s melody and bass-line take wing by not emoting over the repeated triplet chords, and aligns Etude 4’s chordal canonic writing to perfection. Although Etude 9’s quiet rapid chords and upward chromatic patterns are polished and voiced to a proverbial T, I wouldn’t have minded more audacity and panache à la Thibaudet, Richter and Anda, not to mention Samson François. But Ax makes this music sound less square-toed and repetitive than it often seems. He places three of the five posthumously published études (Nos 4, 5 and 2) within the context of the standard text. A most welcome release.