Tzimon Barto

Born and raised in Florida, Tzimon Barto received his first piano lessons from his grandmother at the age of five, and later attended the Juilliard School of Music where he won the Gina Bachauer Competition two years in a row.  He was also a conducting fellow and coach for the American Opera Center, and at the Tanglewood Institute he received the “Most Outstanding Student Award” for his achievements as a young conductor.

Tzimon Barto’s international breakthrough came in the mid-1980s, when he appeared at the Vienna Musikverein and the Salzburg Festival at the invitation of Herbert von Karajan.  He has since performed with nearly every major international orchestra and is a frequent guest at major festivals such as the Ravinia Festival in the USA, the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival as well as the Lucerne Festival. For 25 years he has had a close musical collaboration and friendship with the conductor Christoph Eschenbach.

On his recent recording of Paganini Variations, Tzimon Barto shows that he is “a pianist who particularly cares about poetry” (Piano News 04/2014). Other recordings include Hans Pfitzner’s rarely performed Piano Concerto with the Staatskapelle Dresden under Christian Thielemann, Schumann’s concert pieces and Ghost Variations as well as albums with works by Bach, Haydn, Rameau, Ravel, Schubert and Tchaikovsky. Actively involved in contemporary music, he created an international composition competition for piano solo in 2006 – the Barto Prize.