Emanuel Ax. Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco

Never let it be said that Emanuel Ax lets any compositional grass grow under his feet.

The veteran Polish-Canadian-American pianist, who begins a three-day residency starting Friday with the New World Symphony, is in the middle of a project inspired by the music of Brahms that will see him perform music by four contemporary composers including the young Nico Muhly, whose 2011 opera Two Boys had its American premiere Monday at the Metropolitan Opera.

Speaking from London last week, Ax said he had asked the four composers — Muhly and Missy Mazzoli, both Americans, Sweden’s Anders Hillborg and Australia’s Brett Dean — to somehow include the notes F-A-F, in imitation of Brahms’ motto in the 1850s: Frei aber froh, or Free but happy.

“I assume they’re writing pieces that will somehow connect to Brahms … I’ve asked each composer to please use FAF in the piece they’re doing. And I don’t know if they’re going to; they all agreed to it at some point,” Ax said.

Muhly’s work will include a vocal part for the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, and Mazzoli is writing a solo piano piece. Hillborg is adding a cello, to be played by Yo-Yo Ma, and Dean will write three solo piano pieces to go in between each of the four pieces of Brahms’ Op. 119 collection, Ax said. The first performances are scheduled for a series with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in January.

Ax said he did a similar thing a few years back for Chopin and Schumann, whose bicentenaries were celebrated by the classical music world in 2010. “I got some composers to write pieces that would somehow connect to Chopin or Schumann, and that seemed to work out, so we’re just trying this now,” he said.

For his appearances with the New World, Ax will perform twice with the symphony in the Beethoven Fourth Concerto (Friday and Saturday), with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting, and on Sunday gives an all-Brahms solo recital that includes the early Piano Sonata No. 2 (in F-sharp minor, Op. 2), the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel (Op. 24), and a chamber work, the Piano Quartet No. 3 (in C minor, Op. 60), which he’ll play with some New World students.

Brahms wrote three piano sonatas very early in his career and then abandoned the form, and the usual knock against them is that while the music might be wonderful, the piano writing is ungrateful and overly labored.

But Ax doesn’t agree.

“It’s difficult to say that it’s unpianistic, because people say that about Beethoven, but Beethoven actually defines a large part of the piano. So to say that his stuff is unpianistic doesn’t really fit, because what do you play then? You have to learn to play the piano the way he wants you to play,” Ax said. “And I think the same is true of Brahms. Brahms developed a new technique, different from other people. A lot of things in Brahms happen in octave movement: You keep your hands in the same position, and you move your arm.

“In Chopin or Mozart, it’s much more fluid. With Brahms, the movement is different, but I think it’s definitely a doable kind of technique, and it was something that he found,” he said. “Some of the stuff is defined by the fact that these are great composers, and it becomes pianistic because they wrote it.”

Another monumental challenge is presented by the Handel Variations, a massive work that covers an enormous amount of narrative ground and then climaxes in a huge and demanding fugue. Ax said it’s his favorite piece of Brahms.

“It’s very, very hard; it’s scary to play,” he said, agreeing with a suggestion that pacing the work can be especially challenging. “That is one of the problems generally with variations — how to connect things, and at the same time, how to contrast. That’s a major issue. And of course, a major composer like Brahms … makes it easier for you because they’re aware of it, and they compose that way. “They provide a tremendous amount of variety, and it’s up to us to find it,” Ax said.

Friday and Saturday night’s concerts feature the Beethoven Fourth along with the Second Symphony of Schumann, with whom the 64-year-old Ax shares a June 8 birthday (“I’m very proud of that,” he says). On Saturday night, Tilson Thomas and the orchestra will also add Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture.

The Fourth Concerto of Beethoven (in G major, Op. 58) is one of the most unusual in the repertoire. It opens not with a big orchestral statement but with the piano alone, quietly playing the first theme, after which the strings enter in a completely different key.

“It’s a beautiful way to begin, but it’s not to me the most important thing about the piece,” Ax said. “I think what he’s doing in the beginning is changing the role of the orchestra and the pianist, the orchestra and the soloist.”

The strings’ entrance in the distant key of B major, he said, is something you might expect the soloist to do, not the orchestra.

“I think it’s actually kind of a psychological reversal, and I think he’s always playing with this idea of ‘what is the tutti, and what is the solo?’ I think that happens a lot in this piece.”

The second movement, rather than being a straightforward slow movement, is constructed as a dialogue between soloist and orchestra, speaking in short sentences, question-and-answer style.

“In the second movement, you’re really dealing with two characters, so you can’t say that one is tutti and one is solo,” Ax said. “I think that’s been set up by the opening, and it’s an astonishing, amazing movement.”

A native of Lvov, Poland (now in the Ukraine), Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, as a boy. He studied at Juilliard, where he still occasionally teaches, and first came to prominence in 1974 when he won the first Artur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, Israel. He has enjoyed an international career of great prominence since then, not just in the number of performances he gives every year but also in his extensive discography.

Ax said the level of pianism exhibited by today’s young musicians is intimidating and probably unprecedented.

“I think the young people today are totally phenomenal. I’m completely bowled over by what I hear. Most of the time I hear nothing but brilliant playing. You know, I’m happy to be old, because I could never keep up with this,” he said.

When he was just starting out, for example, there were only a few pianists who took on the Rachmaninov Third Concerto. “Now I don’t know any young (pianist) that cannot play the Rachmaninov Third with flair and ease. It’s really scary,” he said.

Ax himself has taught some remarkable young pianists, including Orion Weiss, an American who loves to do things like include a Keith Jarrett improvisation on his recitals.

“It’s a wonderful time, an amazing time for piano playing,” he said. “Certainly on the professional side, I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like it.”

Emanuel Ax performs with the New World Symphony at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday at the New World Center in Miami Beach. He gives a solo recital at the center, accompanied by New World Fellows, at 2 p.m. Sunday. For more information or to get tickets, call 305-673-3331 or visit www.nws.edu.