Yefim Bronfman was born in 1958 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In 1973 he emigrated with his family to Israel, where he continued his piano training with Arie Vardi at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. He moved to the United States soon thereafter to complete his studies with Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. His debut with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta in 1978 launched an international career that has led to collaborations with the leading orchestras and conductors. In the 2014-15 season, for example, he concertized with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, and the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics. He has performed the two Brahms piano concertos with the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst and Milan’s La Scala Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. As “Capell Virtuoso” he will give numerous performances with the Sächsische Staatskapelle in the 2015-16 season. From the start of his career Bronfman has been deeply committed to chamber music as well, performing with such colleagues as Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Joshua Bell, and Yo-Yo Ma; in the spring of 2015 he undertook a tour of the United States with Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lynn Harrell. Bronfman, who has recorded all of the Beethoven piano concerti as well as the Triple Concerto together with violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Truls Mørk, and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under David Zinman is also a committed performer of contemporary works: in 2007, for example, he premiered Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto and in 2012 came the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Second Piano Concerto, which he performed during the past season in London and Göteborg. Bronfman, who has been an American citizen since 1989 and who won the Avery Fisher Prize in 1991, boasts an extensive discography; he won a Grammy Award for his recording of the three Bartók concertos.
photo Dario Acosta