Yefim Bronfman
Piano

Yefim Bronfman was born in 1958 in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). In 1973 he emigrated with his family to Israel, where he continued his piano studies with Arie Vardi at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. Soon thereafter, he moved to the United States and completed his training 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 brought him together with the leading orchestras and conductors. In the 2017-18 season, for example, he went on a tour of the United States with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta; concertized with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Mariss Jansons in Munich, London, and Vienna; and appeared with the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. The Vienna Philharmonic invited him to perform four concerts in April 2018 to jointly celebrate his 60th birthday; and at the end of the season he traveled with the London Symphony Orchestra throughout Thailand and China. From the outset of his career, Bronfman has also devoted himself intensively to chamber music, for example in partnering with Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, and Yo-Yo Ma and later with Magdalena Kožená and Emmanuel Pahud. Bronfman, who appeared as LUCERNE FESTIVAL’s “artiste étoile” in 2009, is moreover a committed performer of contemporary works and has given the world premieres of piano concertos by Esa-Pekka Salonen (2007) and Magnus Lindberg (2012) and of Jörg Widmann’s Trauermarsch for piano and orchestra (2014). Bronfman, who has been an American citizen since 1989 and who received the Avery Fisher Prize in 1991, commands an extensive discography; his recording of the three Bartók concertos won a Grammy Award.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 25 August 1999 in Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto, with the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta.