By BRUCE BRUBAKER

Emanuel Ax performing with the Juilliard Orchestra at a John Adams retrospective in March 2003 with the composer at the podium. (Photo by Hiro Ito)

Pianist and Juilliard faculty member Emanuel Ax will perform with conductor Charles Dutoit and the Juilliard Orchestra on October 26 at Carnegie Hall as part of Mr. Ax's Perspectives series focusing on the music of Debussy. Bruce Brubaker talked with him about the project, Debussy's music, and the role of the performer.

Bruce Brubaker: The people at Carnegie Hall asked you to do a Perspectives series. How did you get to Debussy?

Emanuel Ax: I tend to play a lot of German repertoire. They were looking for something different. I remembered a conversation I had with Andras Schiff, over 20 years ago. He said: "Someone really ought to complete those Debussy sonatas."

BB: That's such an interesting part of this project.

EA: I've done the violin sonata and the cello sonata. And there's the piece for flute, viola, and harp—all wonderful. Each of the three programs in Zankel Hall contains one of the known Debussy sonatas and each will have a piece written according to the instrumentation he left for three more. I have to play harpsichord. At least, I'm going to try. It has a keyboard, so I should be able to negotiate it somehow.

BB: [laughing] Piano-sized keys, please…

EA: Steve Stuckey is composing that piece. I'm hoping he doesn't know enough about the harpsichord to include all kinds of registration changes! Anyway, he'll be around to teach me. Kaija Saariaho is writing the piece for "divers instruments."

BB: Including piano?

EA: Yes, two of the new pieces include piano, one includes the harpsichord. For one program, we have Susan Graham. On another, Fima [Yefim] Bronfman is joining me to do En blanc et noir, and Schumann's Pedal Piano Etudes, transcribed by Debussy for two pianos. Yo-Yo [Ma] is coming for the third program. Then, I knew I wanted to do something with Wagner. At Juilliard, I had classes in L&M [literature and materials of music] with Hugh Aitken, a wonderful composer and teacher. He always told us how Debussy was very influenced by Wagner. So there's the program with the Boston Symphony: I play Franck's Symphonic Variations, which is as Wagnerian as I could get … There are two excerpts from Le Martyre de St. Sébastien, the Prelude to Act 1 of Parsifal, and "Liebestod," and it all ends with La Mer! The other orchestral program involves the Juilliard Orchestra. I'm so excited about it; it's a great thing. I hope more of that happens.

BB: Me too. The orchestra's played at Carnegie a couple of times, but this is the first time it's part of Carnegie's series.

EA: It's very exciting.

BB: There's a trend everywhere to "thematic programming"…

EA: All of us think that way, to a degree. When you put together any recital program you're trying to juxtapose things or make logical connections. Perspectives is more "thematic" in the literary sense. Sometimes things work well on paper—I'm hoping this will all work well in sound. I have a solo recital where I'm doing the Images and that includes "Hommage à Rameau." So I thought, let's put in some Rameau.

BB: Have we lost our taste for that old-fashioned piano recital: music by Bach, a sonata by Beethoven?

EA: Yes, it's so expected and predictable. If you took the same pieces but reversed the order, it might already be an improvement.

BB: Do you make different kinds of recital programs for different cities?

EA: I don't really dare—I'm scared to death! Garrick Ohlsson can play a different program in every city. I don't have the nerves; I tend to play the same program. To be honest, I think audiences are not that different. You want to connect with an audience and, with any luck, they also come prepared to interact with you.

BB: I played at the Kuhmo Festival in Finland this summer…

EA: I know a lot about it.

BB: People did strange, intense programs. Alexei Lubimov played an entire recital of Liszt's late pieces. I played a recital of American minimalist music. The audience seemed very happy with that kind of programming. Could you do that in New York?

EA: Yes, when you play at Miller Theater, or maybe at Zankel Hall. They're putting on Pierre-Laurent Aimard. He's doing a program which is all-American, really hard American—Carter's Night Fantasies and the "Concord" Sonata of Ives. I bet the hall will be full.

BB: In the late 19th century and early 20th century there were a lot of pianists playing the same repertoire. And now…

EA: We have a history of hearing many, many pianists performing the same pieces and we have unbelievably easy access to recordings of those pieces by hundreds of pianists. In 1910 or 1920, or even '30 and '40, if you had five performances of Chopin's B-minor Sonata in a year at Carnegie Hall, those may have been the only performances people heard. They wouldn't yet have owned a recording of it. Now, people interested enough to hear five piano recitals own multiple recordings of all those pieces. Of course, it's O.K. to have multiple performances of the same piece. Take Beethoven's symphonies: It would be fantastic to have a series that juxtaposes Kurt Masur and Roger Norrington doing them back to back.

BB: I sat next to someone on an airplane. He was a pop musician. I had a lot of trouble explaining why anybody would want to own multiple recordings of a symphony by Beethoven. "Isn't it the same music?" he asked. And I had to say, "It is…"

EA: A jazz guy might understand. You'd say: "Look at all the standards that are interpreted differently by every jazz pianist. You want to own Oscar Peterson's version of 'Summertime' and you have to get Art Tatum, and the new guy, Marcus Roberts." In a sense that's analogous, even though the notes don't change that much for us (they're beginning to!). Maybe pop music doesn't have as many facets?

BB: There's the sense that a good band originates its own material, then people come along and do "covers"…

EA: Which used to be true for us too.

BB: Right, Beethoven played Beethoven.

EA: He originated his own material. The Dave Matthews of 1810!

BB: You're not French. Is music a "universal language"? Or is there something about this repertoire you're doing that's difficult if you're not French?

EA: I could speak about Chopin with some authority—I come from there and I speak the language. I'm authentically Polish. But I don't think that there's any kind of direct line or monopoly.

BB: There were dozens of Polish pianists who specialized in Chopin a hundred years ago. You know T. S. Eliot's line: "We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole/ Transmit the Preludes…" It was such a phenomenon. What about Germanic repertory: If you're not a native speaker of German, is there something about the syntax of the music that remains foreign to you? Is it an offensive question?

EA: It's an important question, but it's hard to generalize. The very people perceiving what is "authentic" are prejudiced themselves. If you find someone who happens to like a particular German pianist's playing, that person might say: "This is authentic playing and you can't play Beethoven this way unless you're German."

Emanuel Ax (Photo courtesy of Carnegie Hall)

BB: When you told me about Aimard's American recital my chauvinistic reaction was: "Can he really do that?" or, "How dare he!" I remember a European manager asking me, "Can Richard Goode really play Beethoven?" I was offended.

EA: I think Garrick plays Chopin wonderfully, and he comes from White Plains. I love Kristian Zimerman's playing. He's a fabulous artist. He happens to be Polish and he plays wonderful Chopin.

BB: I'm aware, though, that in the sonatas Debussy finished, he signed himself: "Claude Debussy, musicien français." It was in the midst of the war, but I don't know what that conveys.

EA: I'd hate to feel that my love for Beethoven, Chopin, or Debussy was tainted by coming from somewhere other than where they came from. But I know what you mean about thinking of American music and someone like Aimard. What do we say about Elliott Carter? How "American" is his music? And Gershwin?

BB: I remember playing the Rhapsody in Blue with a European orchestra and really struggling. The clarinet player really tried to play it. But it remained elusive, performance after performance. It never sounded right to me.

EA: Maybe he didn't grow up with it. I think the individual exposure is more important than the "national" one.

BB: That's what I thought when you were talking about Garrick—he grew up with a lot of Eastern European teachers.

EA: We had so many at Juilliard. At one time, the faculty was largely Slavic. If anybody had a tradition, Garrick did. It's the Poles who missed out!

"An old-fashioned piano recital program is so predictable. If you took the same pieces but reversed the order, it might already be an improvement."

BB: So Debussy was fed up with things German—in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and after a century of Germanic music predominance. And he had his encounter with Asian sounds. How important has that been? In your program with the Juilliard Orchestra, you're also playing Estampes, which includes "Pagodes." That seems to evidence a pretty direct Asian influence, either musically or "thematically."

EA: Sounds and pictures Debussy used to his own purposes. There's nothing more French than "Pagodes," as Debussy's "Spanish" music is also very French. In Nights in the Gardens of Spain, it sounds to me like Falla was really a student of Debussy. The influence went more in that direction.

BB: Perhaps someone like Takemitsu's greatest influences were the French composers who were themselves most influenced by Asian music—a curious mirroring, back and forth.

EA: There's a symbiosis. And, to me, maybe French music is "Asian" music. I heard Debussy and I heard all those scales and thought, "That's 'French'."

BB: So tomatoes are Italian! It's hard to imagine what French music might have been like without those influences. If Debussy hadn't heard the gamelan…

EA: I can't imagine. But then, can one imagine the Afternoon of a Faun without the Prelude to Tristan?

BB: In spite of all those lovely poetic titles, all those images of a comfortable life, Debussy's music itself sometimes seems subversive. It has a kind of open-endedness…

EA: So much has to do with the style at the time you listen. There was such a "halo" around Debussy's music. If you hear Gieseking's old recordings, or Casadesus, it's so beautiful, and so pedaled, and so seductive. Then you hear Boulez conducting Debussy, and it's so clear, and so viscerally exciting—just propulsion and angles.

BB: In Hollywood movies of the '40s and '50s, the starlet was almost never photographed without a soft-focus lens.

EA: Maybe it's the time we live in. One is not more valid than the other.

The Juilliard Orchestra Charles Dutoit, conductor Emanuel Ax, piano Jossie Pérez, mezzo-soprano Carnegie Hall Sunday, Oct. 26, 2 p.m. For time and ticket information, please see the calendar.

BB: Is it more about the people who are listening?

EA: When music has a halo, or it's clear, or subversive, or it's comfortable—it has just as much to do with the recipient as with the giver. The audience is just as involved in music as the performer. With the incredible rise in the proficiency of the professional musician, there is such a gap between the professional and the amateur. It's so easy to turn on a CD, or listen to other people play. I'm a big fan of sports. Would we really have baseball stadiums full of people if none of them had ever thrown around a ball or batted?

BB: In the period when all those pianists were playing the same pieces, there were so many amateurs. When Mr. Paderewski came to town they all wanted to hear him play their repertoire.

EA: Exactly, see how the big guys do what I'm trying to do. You go see the N.B.A. to see guys do what you would like to do. As interesting and exciting as a lot of young people's concerts are, if you have a choice, I'd say, "Give somebody a lesson with an instrument in their hands."

Pianist and faculty member Bruce Brubaker's latest CD for Arabesque Recordings, titled Inner Cities, was released last month.