Mozart might be the headliner of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s A Mozart Celebration, three programmes showcasing the composer’s work beginning with Dramatic Mozart, but it’s really pianist Emanuel Ax who is at the heart of the festival.

The Polish-born American pianist last performed with the orchestra in 2014 when he came out for a Beethoven concerto cycle with SSO Chief David Robertson. He’s back four years later to do it all again, this time with six of Mozart’s concertos, which he’ll perform with the SSO over the next two weeks. This is familiar territory for Ax and Robertson, who performed a very similar series of concerts with Robertson’s other band, the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, in September last year.

Dramatic MozartEmanuel Ax, David Robertson and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Dramatic Mozart. Photo © Daniela Testa

Ax kicked off the concertos with one of the more neglected of Mozart’s piano concertos, No 14 in E Flat, K449, which the composer wrote in Vienna in 1784 for his student Barbara Ployer. While the Allegro vivace, in three, begins with an elegant playfulness, there is also fire enough – which Robertson made sure to highlight...