Fabulous Fima!

Join us in wishing an outstanding birthday to Yefim Bronfman, next season’s Philharmonic Artist-in-Residence. This keyboard-devouring genius has performed with us already 87 (!) times, including on tour (check out the above video of Prokofiev’s knuckle-busting Second as performed in Spain). While you wait to hear his Beethoven cycle and more with us in 2013–14, don’t forget to pre-order your copy of the CD that includes his performance of a piece composed for him — Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 2 — in a live concert with Alan Gilbert and the Phil in May 2012. 

Many happy returns to this lovely gentleman and remarkable musician.

(Video: Chris Lee)

“ It was a special wish of his to do all five Beethoven piano concertos. ”

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Alan Gilbert, on 2013-14 Artist-in-Residence Yefim Bronfman, who will play the entire cycle with the Orchestra. 

“To hear one pianist and one orchestra traverse the entire span really tells you something about the artist,  and something about Beethoven.”

“Brahms writes very clumsily for the piano, which is surprising because he was himself a pianist.”

So notes Yefim Bronfman, in this Wall Street Journal profile. The pianist discusses his current fixation on the composer’s work, including the Piano Concerto No. 1, which he performs with the Philharmonic this week.. 

Just Good Friends?

“I can do nothing but think of you,” wrote Johannes Brahms to Clara Schumann in 1855. 

The relationship between the composer and the widow of composer Robert Schumann, a distinguished pianist and composer in her own right, has long been the subject of speculation, fueled in part by the passion expressed in their letters to each other.

“Who knows better than yourself … how enthusiastically and deeply I absorb everything that comes from you,” wrote Clara to Johannes in 1860.  

Wherever the truth lies, Brahms relied on Clara for advice on his works, such as the Piano Concerto No. 1, performed this week by Yefim Bronfman and the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Lorin Maazel. 

Indoor/Outdoor

Tonight Yefim Bronfman will appear with Alan Gilbert and the Philharmonic for the ninth time this season, but for the first time in the Great Outdoors.

Back in May he performed the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall, then immediately hit the road for five concerts on the Orchestra’s CALIFORNIA 2012 tour, during which he reprised the Lindberg and added Beethoven to the mix.

Tonight he’ll join the Orchestra for Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. Judging from yesterday’s rehearsal, this will be a performance not to be missed!

Two Programs, One Rave

Last week Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic triumphed in back-to-back feats of daring: Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, and a full program including the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

The New York Times said Lindberg’s final work as The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence has “great stylistic diversity.… Yet for all the shifts in language and style, the concerto comes across as organic and inevitable.”

And about the Carnegie concert: “There was still plenty of energy, vigor and, in the finale, terror in this Mahler Sixth. The orchestra’s sound was sumptuous and grand in the great hall.”

Music Director, Orchestra, and soloist (the indomitable Yefim Bronfman, at center in photo, flanked by Alan Gilbert and Magnus Lindberg) will reprise the Concerto this week on the CALIFORNIA 2012 tour.

“ I don’t believe it is easy or even fruitful any more for a composer to invent a completely new universe for the instrument; rather, the complexity of pianistic history needs to be absorbed into a personal language. ”

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Magnus Lindberg, of his Piano Concerto No. 2, The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic, which Alan Gilbert and the Orchestra will premiere May 3–5. Learn more about the composer of Kraft and EXPO, and his thoughts about the last work he is writing during his residency — which will feature virtuoso pianist Yefim Bronfman in the premiere and on the Orchestra’s CALIFORNIA 2012 tour — by reading the program notes.