The conversation with Emanuel Ax, master at the piano, is about the differences between audiences in New York City and Maine. His voice is polite and friendly as he discusses his solo career, and he considers his answers carefully before speaking. Then, Ax, who will perform Friday, Dec. 13, at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, does what newspaper people call burying the lead.

“I don’t feel that New Yorkers are any more perceptive or intelligent than people in Maine,” says Ax. “I play all over the world and I am just as happy playing in Orono as anywhere. I love the university. After all, it’s where I met my wife.”

In Orono?

“Yes.”

The year, he says, was 1969 and Ax had been lured to Maine by Joseph Fuchs, the noted violinist and chamber music teacher at The Juilliard School in New York and at Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in Blue Hill. Fuchs, who was Ax’s teacher, was holding a music program that summer at the University of Maine, and both Ax and the pianist Yoko Nozaki attended.

Did they fall smack in love?

He pauses and lets out a soft laugh. “At least I did.”

The two married and now live in New York with their two children.

In the ensuing years, Ax, who graduated from Juilliard, won top prize in the distinguished Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition at age 25, and he is now one of the busiest international concert recitalists in the country. He has been a regular visitor to Maine, which, he acknowledges, has a laudable tradition of music programs such as Kneisel Hall itself and the Pierre Monteux School in Hancock.

But Ax also recognizes something special about the audiences in far-flung parts of the country.

“I think people in places outside of large cities are more appreciative,” he says. “They probably go to fewer events. But audiences are just as important and perceptive anywhere in the world.”

Born in Lvov, Poland, Ax moved with his family to Winnipeg when he was 6. His resume attests to a career highlighted by performances at important stops on the American music map – New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Aspen – as well as tours around the world and appearances with many other notable musicians, including Isaac Stern, Jaime Laredo and Yo-Yo Ma. He also received a Grammy Award for his Brahms Trio recording with Ma and Richard Stolzman.

At the Orono concert, Ax will play selections from Beethoven, Chopin and Bernstein, a program he will repeat next week at Carnegie Hall. But the venue, says Ax, is less important than the audience.

“The less self-conscious and the more friendly you feel, the more freedom you tend to produce,” says Ax. “It’s back and forth between performer and audience – always hoping that the composer’s work will be served as well and as excitingly as possible by both of us. When people leave, I hope that they leave thinking, ‘What a fantastic composer’ – whoever it was – that the concert was meaningful, and that it was an emotional and cathartic experience.”

And possibly romantic. After all, people have been known to fall in love in Orono.

Pianist Emanuel Ax will perform at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13, at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. For tickets, call 581-1755.