Pianist
Yefim Bronfman has been a fixture of concert stages, especially in the U.S., since becoming an American citizen in 1989. He is especially admired for his performances of modern Russian repertory, in which he balances pianistic fireworks with the moody introspection common to many of the works of the otherwise diverse
Prokofiev and
Shostakovich.
Bronfman was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then part of the Soviet Union, on April 10, 1958. He had his first lessons from his mother, a piano teacher by trade. The family emigrated to Israel in 1973, and the teenaged
Yefim began piano studies at Tel Aviv University. After just two years of work with teacher Arie Vardi, he was ready for a prestigious international debut with the
Montreal Symphony under
Zubin Mehta.
Bronfman rounded out his studies in the U.S. at the Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute, and the Marlboro Festival; private teachers included
Rudolf Firkusny,
Leon Fleisher, and
Rudolf Serkin. In 1978, he made his debut with the
New York Philharmonic, and his recital debuts in New York and in Washington, D.C., were equally prestigious: they occurred at the 92nd Street Y and the Kennedy Center, respectively.
Since then,
Bronfman's touring schedule has included stops at most of the world's major concert halls. His consistent popularity has dovetailed with that of Russian music generally, and he has recorded all five
Prokofiev piano concertos and all seven of the composer's technically fearsome sonatas. However, his repertoire extends as far back as the music of
Domenico Scarlatti, and he was given a Grammy Award in 1997 for his recordings of Bartók's three piano concertos with
Esa-Pekka Salonen and the
Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has notched several other Grammy and Gramophone award nominations.
Bronfman records for Sony, where he released a two-piano collaboration with
Emanuel Ax, featuring
music by Rachmaninov. He has also been an enthusiastic chamber music player. Two high points of his career came in 1991: he returned that year to Russia for the first time since his youth, and he was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize. In 2000, he reached wider audiences when his performance of
Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 102, was featured in the film
Fantasia 2000; he performed the work live at special screenings of the film in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo.
Bronfman's performance of the two Shostakovich concertos was released in conjunction with the film. A description of
Bronfman appeared in Philip Roth's novel The Human Stain (2000). A steady stream of recordings included the 2006 Rachmaninoff Collection; 2008's Tchaikovsky: Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50; and Brahms & Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2 (2011). In 2013, his set of Prokofiev concertos was reissued by Sony Classical.
Bronfman accompanied
Shlomo Mintz in a recording of
Prokofiev violin sonatas on Deutsche Grammophon in 2019, and mezzo-soprano
Magdalena Kožená on the album
Nostalgia on PentaTone Classics in 2021. ~ James Manheim