He would need five lifetimes to study all the works that interest him, Yefim Bronfman confided to the Los Angeles Times: "What drives me is new repertoire. I can't think of anything nicer than to commission and learn new pieces of music." Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1958, Bronfman immigrated with his family to Israel at the age of fifteen and took on American citizenship in 1989. As artist étoile of this year's Summer festival, he now has an opportunity to demonstrate the full range of his versatility. He will play Brahms's Second Piano Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, the Berg Chamber Concerto with the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY ORCHESTRA under Pierre Boulez, and, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen's Piano Concerto, a work dedicated to him. He will devote himself to Beethoven, Schumann, and Russian romantics in a piano recital and play chamber music with this year's composer-in-residence Jörg Widmann, including his Eleven Humoresques. Chamber music, Bronfman claims, is his non plus ultra: "The wonderful thing is that constant giving and taking, communicating by sound."
 For thirty years, ever since his début with the New York Philharmonic in 1978, Bronfman has been in the top echelon of the world's great pianists. His virtuosity, his mighty "paws," his spontaneity, and his sensitive interpretations are objects of universal amazement. But there is one thing that this pupil of Rudolf Firkušný, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin never was – a grandstander. Bronfman sits at the piano like the Rock of Ages, celebrating his art with almost Stoic tranquillity while unleashing stormwaves of emotion. In this respect he sees himself in good company: "Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli never moved one muscle too many. But when he lifted his eyebrows it meant a whole lot."

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