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.

A frequent touring partner with the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors, the 2024–25 season began with the Pittsburgh and NDR Hamburg symphonies on tour in Europe followed by China and Japan with the Vienna Philharmonic. With orchestras in the US he returns to Cleveland, New York, Houston, Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, Sarasota, and Pittsburgh and in Europe to Hamburg, Helsinki, Berlin, Lyon, and Vienna. In advance of a spring Carnegie Hall recital his program can be heard in Austin, St. Louis, Stillwater (OK), San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Washington (DC), Amsterdam, Rome, Lisbon, and Spain. Two special projects are scheduled this season—duos with flutist Emmanuel Pahud in Europe last fall and trios with Anne-Sophie Mutter and Pablo Ferrandez in the US in spring.

Bronfman works regularly with an illustrious group of conductors that Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Alan Gilbert, Vladimir Jurowski, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir 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, his partners have included 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 emigration to Israel at age 15.

Widely praised for his solo, chamber, and orchestral recordings, Bronfman has been nominated for 6 Grammy Awards, 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. His most recent CD releases are the 2014 Grammy-nominated Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 2 commissioned for him and performed by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert on the Da Capo label; Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with Mariss Jansons and the Bayerischer Rundfunk; a recital disc, Perspectives, complementing Bronfman’s designation as a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist for the 2007–08 season; and recordings of all the Beethoven piano concertos as well as the Triple Concerto together with violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Truls Mørk, and the Tönhalle Orchestra Zürich under David Zinman for the Arte Nova/BMG label.

Now available on DVD are his performances of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Franz Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic from Schoenbrunn (2010) on Deutsche Grammophon; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor, with Andris Nelsons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from the 2011 Lucerne Festival; Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle on the EuroArts label; and both Brahms Concertos with Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra (2015).
Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union, Yefim Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, where he studied 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 Firkusny, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists, Bronfman was further honored as the 2010 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane prize in piano performance from Northwestern University and a 2015 honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music.