Ax’s first of three thrills Sydney, combining power and attack with exquisite delicacy and pinpoint articulation.

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House

June 13, 2014

Mozart knew he had a hit on his hands when he heard an apprentice in the street whistling tunes from The Marriage of Figaro. Beethoven probably felt the same after he played his Piano Concerto No 2 at his Viennese debut in 1795, if this first of the Emanuel Ax series with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson is anything to go by. The interval crowd was happily whistling the jaunty rondo as they made their way to the Opera House bars.

Robertson launched the three-concert package rightly with the Op 19 B Flat work as it predates what we now know as the No 1. Beethoven delayed publishing it, revising it and dismissing it as a work “worth 10 ducats”. Judging by Ax’s superb handling of this refreshing and unpretentious concerto it’s hard to see why the composer was so dissatisfied.

Both concertos feature a brilliant opening movement with extended cadenzas in which Beethoven lays out his wares as a composer and as a pianist. The B Flat concerto’s cadenza, believed to have been written later...