About this Artist

American pianist ROBERT MCDONALD has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, and the Far East both as solo recitalist and, for many years, as recital partner to Isaac Stern and other distinguished instrumentalists. He has appeared with major orchestras in the U.S. and Europe. As a chamber musician, he has performed with the Juilliard, American, Takacs, Muir, Brentano, St. Lawrence, Vermeer, Borromeo, and Shanghai string quartets, as well as with Musicians from Marlboro. In addition, he has given concerts for the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, NHK, and BBC television worldwide. His discography includes recordings for Sony Classical, Vox, Bridge, Musical Heritage Society, ASV, and CRI.

McDonald is a member of the piano faculties at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he holds the Penelope P. Watkins Chair in piano studies. In addition to being the artistic director of the Taos School of Music and Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico, he has participated in the Bergen, Besancon, Lucerne, Montreux, Salzburg, Aldeburgh, and Schleswig-Holstein festivals in Europe, the Marlboro, Brevard, and Caramoor festivals in the United States, as well as the Banff Center in Canada. He also regularly gives piano and chamber music master classes at prominent universities and music schools in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Korea, and China.

McDonald is the winner of the Gold Medal at the Busoni International Competition, and the top prizes at both the William Kapell International Competition and the Washington International Competition. He is also the recipient of the National Federation of Music Clubs Artist Award, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Deutscher Schallplatten Critic’s Prize.

Robert McDonald graduated magna cum laude from Lawrence University. He then completed his studies at the Curtis Institute, the Juilliard School, and the Manhattan School of Music. His teachers include Theodore Rehl, Rudolf Serkin, Seymour Lipkin, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Beveridge Webster, and Gary Graffman.