Like a good few pianists, Emanuel Ax cannot resist delving into this discarded treasure-trove, and he scatters three of the [usually omitted] variations among his performance of the 'official' series. His playing throughout is as unfailingly musical as we have come to expect from him.

Emanuel Ax is on top form for his first solo CD in many years...Ax scrubs Schumann's Symphonic Etudes clean of certain long-encrusted interpretative 'traditions'...A most welcome release.

There's a wonderful generosity of spirit about the way in which he approaches each of them...He presents the Beethoven as public statement, but Ax is equally capable of judging the perfect, intimate scale for Haydn's F minor Variations...It's such a warm-hearted performance that you hardly notice the keenly analytical musical mind that's directing it so unswervingly.

Ax performs superlatively here in a way that ignites the virtuosity that Haydn, Beethoven and Schumann all call into play but with a command of colour, variety of touch and strength of interpretative ideas that are allied to his infallible sense of how the music breathes...performances that combine power and playfulness, clarity, cohesion and character of a consistently compelling order. This is playing by a true master of his art.