Mozart Concerto For Two Pianos

New York Philharmonic Anne-Marie McDermott, piano & Yefim Bronfman, piano

Orchestral Series

Friday, July 24, 2026 at 6pm Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

Pianists Anne-Marie McDermott and Yefim Bronfman team up to perform Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in a New York Phil program that also features the Festival premiere of Caroline Mallonee’s Lakeside Game and Prokofiev’s Suite from Cinderella.

Elim Chan, conductor
Yefim Bronfman, piano
Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

CAROLINE MALLONEE Lakeside Game
MOZART Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat major
PROKOFIEV Suite from Cinderella

Caroline Mallonee's Lakeside Game is co-commissioned by Bravo! Vail, the New York Philharmonic, Ann Arbor Symphony, and Johnstown Symphony Orchestra

Pre-Concert Talk: Join us at 5:10 PM in the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater Main Lobby for a preconcert lecture.

Meet The Artist Q&A: Join us after the performance for a Q&A session.

All artists, programs, and pricing subject to change.

Lakeside Game (2025; co-commissioned by Bravo! Vail, the New York Philharmonic, Ann Arbor Symphony, and Johnstown Symphony Orchestra) CAROLINE MALLONEE (B. 1975)

In the course of composition
study at Harvard, Yale, the Royal
Conservatoire The Hague, and Duke
University (where she earned her
Ph.D.), Caroline Mallonee worked with
a diverse Who’s Who of composers
that included Bernard Rands, Mario
Davidovsky, Joseph Schwantner,
Evan Ziporyn, Louis Andriessen,
Scott Lindroth, and Stephen Jaffe—
and through it all evolved a musical
style all her own. As a professional
singer, she performs with the Vocális
Chamber Choir and Harmonia Chamber
Singers in Buffalo, where she lives;
as a violinist, she was a founding
member of pulsoptimal, a chamber
ensemble; and as an administrator, she
directs the Walden School Creative
Musicians Retreat, an annual festival
for composers and improvisers. The
New York Philharmonic commissioned
her to write a chamber piece as part of
Project 19 (which marked the centennial
of the 19th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution by extending commissions
to 19 women composers), and the piece
developed into the work heard here.

Mallonee says that she “finds
inspiration in visual art, science,
languages, and musical puzzles”—and,
indeed, she has written pieces directly
inspired by Newton’s Laws of Motion
and sculptures by Maya Lin and Andy
Goldsworthy, as well as a cello duet
structured as a crab canon (very much
a musical puzzle). Lakeside Game leads
to a more nostalgic source. She says:
“The piece was inspired by childhood
memories of walks along the shore
of Lake Michigan in Door County,
Wisconsin. While not meant to be literal
illustration, Lakeside Game evokes a
summer day during which children
play on a rocky beach, skip stones, and
chase one another. One can imagine the
water, dappled with sunlight and always
changing.” Though not structured like
a strict canon, the second half of the
movement reflects the first half, but
now, she explains, “sort of upside down
and sort of backwards.”

Concerto No. 10 in E-flat major for Two Pianos and Orchestra, K.365 (1779) W O L F G A N G A M A D È M O Z A R T (1756-91)

In 1778, Mozart paid an extended
visit to Paris, where he had ample
exposure to a genre that was all the
rage there—the symphonie concertante,
essentially a concerto spotlighting
multiple instruments. He composed
at least three while he was there (two
of them are lost), and more followed
when he returned home to Salzburg the
following January, including his famous
Sinfonia concertante for Violin and Viola
as well as this Concerto for Two Pianos.
He probably wrote it to perform with
his also-precocious sister, Nannerl, and
doubtless they unveiled the piece in
Salzburg, but he continued to play it as
his career progressed. Newly relocated
to Vienna, he wrote to his father in June
1781 to ask for this work to be copied
and sent to him. By September he
reported that his pupil Josepha Barbara
Auernhammer was “worrying me to
death” about the piece—apparently
it had not yet arrived—and only on
October 13 did he write home to say that
he and Fräulein von Auernhammer were
grateful to have received it. They went
on to perform it at least twice at the
Auernhammers’ home in Vienna.

Following its grand, Apollonian
opening, this concerto settles into
an overriding character that is long
on charm and light on bravura;
monumentality gives way to
playfulness. Perhaps that relates to the
concerto’s key of E-flat major, which
Mozart frequently used to suggest a
combination of majesty and warmth.
In the end, listeners are likely to take
away memories of the sheer delight
embodied in the sparkling exchanges
between the two pianists. These reach
their height in the high-spirited cadenza
of the first movement, a passage Mozart
apparently wrote out some while—
perhaps years—after he composed the
rest of the concerto.

Suite from the ballet Cinderella (Zolushka) (1940-44) SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)

Sergei Prokofiev had written six
ballets by the time he composed the
immensely popular Romeo and Juliet.
Following its 1940 Russian premiere,
the Kirov Theatre (today known as
the Mariinsky) in Leningrad (now St.
Petersburg) approached him about
writing a Cinderella ballet. This charmed
music belies that it was a wartime
composition, but it was indeed that,
occupying Prokofiev from 1940-44 and
receiving its premiere on November 21,
1945—six and a half months following
the declaration of Victory in Europe,
two and a half months after the signing
of Japanese surrender, and the day
after the beginning of the Nuremberg
war crimes trials. Various War-related
commissions kept intervening, and by
the time Prokofiev finished orchestrating
Cinderella, the Kirov Theatre was having
War-related problems of its own, such
that the premiere took place instead
at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
“What I wished to express above all
in the music of Cinderella,” he stated,
“was the poetic love of Cinderella and
the Prince, the birth and flowering of
that love, the obstacles in its path and
finally the dream fulfilled. ... I wrote
Cinderella in the traditions of the old
classical ballet: it has pas de deux,
adagios, gavottes, several waltzes, a
pavane, passepied, bourrée, mazurka,
and galop. Each character has his or
her variation.” Cinderella was a huge
success, and it was one of the works
cited when Prokofiev was awarded a
1946 Stalin State Prize. That same year,
he assembled (and in some cases
adapted) movements from the score
into three separate orchestral suites.
The movements played here trace the
ballet’s action and are drawn directly
from the complete score except for
three (“Quarrel,” “Cinderella’s Waltz,”
and “Midnight”), which here use the
re-orchestrations he made for the Suite
No. 1.

Artist Biographies

Elim Chan

Photo Credit: Marco Borggreve

Yefim Bronfman

Photo Credit: Dario Acosta

Anne-Marie McDermott

Photo Credit: Sophie Zhai

Internationally recognized as one of today's most acclaimed and admired pianists, Yefim Bronfman stands among a handful of artists regularly sought by festivals, orchestras, conductors and recital series. His commanding technique, power and exceptional lyrical gifts are consistently acknowledged by the press and audiences alike.

Following summer festival appearances in Vail, Tanglewood and Aspen the 25/26 season begins with an extensive recital and orchestral tour in Asia including China, Japan and South Korea. In Europe Bronfman can be heard with orchestras in London, Kristiansand, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Dresden and on tour with Israel Philharmonic. A special trio project with Anne-Sophie Mutter and Pablo Freewill continue with performances in Switzerland, Spain, Germany and France in the fall of 2025. With orchestras in North America he returns to New York, Rochester, Cleveland (in Miami),Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Montreal Andin recital, Bronfman can be heard in Prague, Milan, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Orange County, Charlottesville, and Toronto.

Mr. Bronfman works regularly with an illustrious group of conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Alan Gilbert, Vladimir Jurowski, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jaap Van Zweden, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman. Summer engagements have regularly taken him to the major festivals of Europe and the US. Always keen to explore chamber music repertoire, his partners have included Pinchas Zukerman, Martha Argerich, Magdalena Kožená, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Emmanuel Pahud and many others. In 1991 he gave a series of joint recitals with Isaac Stern in Russia, marking Mr. Bronfman's first public performances there since his emigration to Israel at age 15.

Widely praised for his solo, chamber and orchestral recordings, Mr. Bronfman has been nominated for 6 GRAMMY® Awards, winning in 1997 with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for their recording of the three Bartok Piano Concerti. His prolific catalog of recordings includes works for two pianos by Rachmaninoff and Brahms with Emanuel Ax, the complete Prokofiev concerti with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta, a Schubert/Mozart disc with the Zukerman Chamber Players and the soundtrack to Disney's Fantasia 2000. His most recent CD releases are the 2014 GRAMMY® nominated Magnus Lindberg's Piano Concerto No. 2 commissioned for him and performed by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert on the Da Capo label; Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 with Mariss Jansons and the Bayerischer Rundfunk; a recital disc, Perspectives, complementing Mr. Bronfman's designation as a Carnegie Hall ‘Perspectives' artist for the 2007-08 season; and recordings of all the Beethoven piano concerti as well as the Triple Concerto together with violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Truls Mørk, and the Tönhalle Orchestra Zürich under David Zinman for the Arte Nova/BMG label.

Now available on DVD are his performances of Liszt's second piano concerto with Franz Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic from Schoenbrunn, 2010 on Deutsche Grammophon; Beethoven's fifth piano concerto with Andris Nelsons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from the 2011 Lucerne Festival; Rachmaninoff's third concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle on the EuroArts label and both Brahms Concerti with Franz Welser-Möst and TheCleveland Orchestra (2015).

Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union, Yefim Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, where he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States, he studied at The Juilliard School, Marlboro School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music, under Rudolf Firkusny, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. A recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists, in 2010 he was further honored as the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane prize in piano performance from Northwestern University and in 2015 with an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music.

One of the most dazzling American pianists of her generation, Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals, and chamber music in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She is one of the most versatile, respected, and best-reviewed pianists of our time. McDermott continues her tenure as music and artistic director of the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, in Colorado, through 2026, which hosts world-renowned artists and orchestras. She is also the artistic director of the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival, in Florida; the artistic director of the McKnight Center’s Chamber Music Festival, at Oklahoma State University; and a former curator of the Mainly Mozart Spotlight Series, in San Diego.

Highlights of McDermott’s 2025-26 season include a Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center tour of the United States, including Alice Tully Hall; Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and No. 4, with music director Otto Tausk; a performance with violinist Richard Lin at Rose Studio, with music by Mozart, Brahms, Fauré, and Paul Schoenfield; a tour of Spain and Portugal; Sociedad Filarmónica de Lima, Peru; Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; and North Carolina Symphony, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” with music director Carlos Miguel Prieto.

Last season McDermott performed Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (MA); performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Paducah Symphony Orchestra (KY); Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Des Moines Symphony and Palm Beach Symphony; with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall in New York City, and on tour in Chicago, Grand Rapids, Kansas City, Ashland (OR), and Vienna (VA). She also appeared in a special chamber music program at the New World Symphony, in Miami Beach, that included Messiaen’s wartime masterwork Quartet for the End of Time; performed as a member of the SPA Trio — with soprano Susanna Phillips and violist Paul Neubauer — at the Rockefeller University, and at Arizona Friends of Chamber Music; and in a chamber music program at the McKnight Center for the Performing Arts, in Stillwater (OK).

In previous seasons McDermott has performed with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, both resulting in immediate re-engagements. She also performed Mozart with the New York Philharmonic at the McKnight Center in Stillwater. Other international highlights include recitals in France at the famed Piano aux Jacobins, in Toulouse; performances with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra at the Cartagena International Music Festival; and an all-Haydn recital tour of China.

The breadth of McDermott’s repertoire ranges from Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Scriabin, also including works by today’s most influential composers. McDermott is currently recording the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Mexico City’s illustrious Sinfónica de Minería, under conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto. She has also recorded the complete piano sonatas of Prokofiev, solo works by Chopin, Bach’s English Suites and Partitas (Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine), and Gershwin’s complete works for piano and orchestra with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (also Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine). She released an album of Mozart concertos with the Calder Quartet that was praised as “exceptional on every count” by Gramophone Magazine. She has recorded five Haydn piano sonatas and two Haydn concertos with the Odense Philharmonic, in Denmark, including two cadenzas written by the late American composer Charles Wuorinen.

In recent years, McDermott participated in the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s Silver Jubilee all-Gershwin program and embarked on a cycle of Beethoven concertos at Santa Fe Pro Musica. She is currently recording the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Mexico City’s illustrious Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, under the direction of Carlos Miguel Prieto. She also premiered and recorded a new concerto by the Danish composer Poul Ruders with the Vancouver Symphony, alongside Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations, and returned to play Gershwin with the New York Philharmonic at Bravo! Vail. Other recent highlights include performing the Mozart Concerto, K. 595 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Sir Donald Runnicles; the Bach D minor concerto with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra; and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the New York City-based Le Train Bleu.

McDermott continues to perform with many leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the symphonies of Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Colorado, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Atlanta, San Diego, New Jersey, Columbus, and Baltimore. She has also toured with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow Virtuosi.

McDermott is a winner of the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women, the Young Concert Artists auditions, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She also received a 2024 Honorary Doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied. She lives in New York City with her husband, Michael.

LAWN SCREEN: Bravo! Vail is pleased to offer the lawn screen experience at this evening's concert.

PRESTO CLUB: Presto Club Night: Youth ages 8–14 are invited to attend pre-concert activities and social lawn experience on this concert. Click here to learn more.