Yefim Bronfman

Internationally recognized as one of today’s most acclaimed and admired pianists, Yefim Bronfman stands among a handful of artists regularly sought by festivals, orchestras, conductors, and recital series. His commanding technique, power, and exceptional lyrical gifts are consistently acknowledged by the press and audiences alike.

Following return visits to summer festivals in Vail and Tanglewood, the season begins with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and concludes with the closing week of the San Francisco Symphony. In North America, Bronfman also returns to the orchestras of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Pittsburgh, Washington, Nashville, San Diego, Buffalo, Fort Wayne, and Kalamazoo. In addition to a return to the Israel Philharmonic, he can be heard in Europe with orchestras in Berlin, Munich, Paris, Geneva, Milan, Turin, Athens, and Lyon.

Bronfman works regularly with an illustrious group of conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Alan Gilbert, Vladimir Jurowski, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jaap van Zweden, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman. Summer engagements have regularly taken him to the major festivals of Europe and the US. Always keen to explore chamber music repertoire, he has performed with Pinchas Zukerman, Martha Argerich, Magdalena Kožená, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Emmanuel Pahud, and many others. In 1991 he gave a series of joint recitals with Isaac Stern in Russia, marking Bronfman’s first public performances there since his immigration to Israel at age 15.

Widely praised for his solo, chamber, and orchestral recordings, Bronfman has received seven Grammy nominations, winning in 1997 with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for their recording of the three Bartók Piano Concertos. His prolific catalog of recordings includes works for two pianos by Rachmaninoff and Brahms with Emanuel Ax, the complete Prokofiev concertos with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, a Schubert/Mozart disc with the Zukerman Chamber Players, and the soundtrack to Disney’s Fantasia 2000.

Born in Tashkent in what was then the Soviet Union, Yefim Bronfman moved to Israel with his family in 1973, studying with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States, he studied at The Juilliard School, Marlboro School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music under Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. The 1991 recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists, Bronfman was further honored in 2010 as the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University and in 2015 with an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music.