Tzimon Barto

Tzimon Barto, who was born in Eustis, Florida, first studied piano with his grandmother and later graduated from the Juilliard School in New York. His international breakthrough followed in the mid-1980s when he performed at the Vienna Musikverein and the Salzburg Festival at the invitation of Herbert von Karajan. Barto has since performed with the leading American orchestras in Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston; in Europe he has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, and the Orchestre de Paris. The 2010-11 season has included performances with the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Vienna Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. For 25 years Barto has enjoyed an artistic partnership with conductor and pianist Christoph Eschenbach, with whom he also performs as a piano duo partner. Barto’s recordings range from works by Rameau to Ra-vel; his latest CD, released in the summer of 2010, is an album of music by Franz Schubert. His commitment to contemporary music is evident in a composition competition known as the Barto Prize, which he founded in 2006. Barto speaks five languages fluently, reads ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and is currently studying Mandarin Chinese; in addition, he is a writer. His first book, a lady of Greek origin, was published in 2001, while a stage version by Sven-Eric Bechtolf was recently performed in Frankfurt and at the Vienna Klangbogen Festival. His novel Harold Flanders was published in 2010.

August 2011