Yefim Bronfman

The Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone hosts Yefim Bronfman, one of the greatest living pianists, famous and acclaimed throughout the world, especially in the romantic and late romantic repertoire. The evening presents a program that includes the monumental Grand Sonata by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the Sonata K 332 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Images (Book II) by Claude Debussy.

The Grand Sonata op.37, composed in 1878 by Tchaikovsky, is an ambitious composition that cost the great Russian musician several months of work. It is a work characterized by the contrast between the heroic and monumental tone of the first movement and the more intimate and lyrical character of the second movement, while the joke and the finale bring a more joyful and lighter atmosphere. The second piece, Mozart's Sonata in A minor K. 310, composed in 1778, constitutes an important stage in the transition from the harpsichord to the piano. In fact, Mozart's piano works are at the basis of that new musical current which, overcoming the Rococo period, through the great season of Viennese classicism, leads to romantic flowering; the possibilities of the new instrument, which were slowly developing only around 1770, were promptly understood by Mozart.Finally, the last piece, the second book of Debussy's Images, is part of the two Images notebooks, composed respectively in 1905 and 1907, which mark the fullness of a certain form of the French composer's piano writing, where the timbral evocations and elegance which characterize it clearly emerge.

Yefim Bronfman, born in the Soviet Union, moved with his family to Israel in 1973 where he studied at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv; he later perfected himself in the United States. He made his debut with Zubin Mehta and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. In 1991 he was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American artists, and in 2010 he received the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize. Bronfman collaborates regularly with the Philharmonic Orchestras of Vienna, New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Philadelphia, as well as the Mariinsky, as well as the Symphony Orchestras of Boston, Montreal, San Francisco, Toronto, and with the greatest conductors. He is a guest at the major European and American festivals.

Photo credits: courtesy of the Auditorium Parco della Musica official site