Pnina Salzman

Pnina Salzman (February 24, 1922, – December 16, 2006) was an internationally renowned pianist and teacher.

Biography

Pnina Salzman was born and died in Tel Aviv, in the Mandate Palestinein. Her parents were very poor and Pnina worked very hard in order to win scholarships.

In 1932, at the age of eight and while a student at Shulamit Conservatory, Alfred Denis Cortot, the French pianist, conductor, and teacher and one of the really great pianists and teachers of his era, heard her play and invited her to Paris to study under him. She was taken to Paris by her mother. Cortot predicted a great future for her.

She graduated at the Ecole Normale de Musique and became a pupil of Magda Tagliaferro at the Conservatoire de Paris. At the age of 15 she memorised the Schuman and Shostakovitch concerts in ten days. Her fame rapidly spread while she was still in Paris. When war broke out in 1939, she was about to be launched in London but her contract was cancelled and she returned to Palestine.

During her absence from her country of birth, Broneslaw Huberman, the world famous violinist, founded one of the world's greatest orchestras, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, (later known as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra). It was composed of some of the world's greatest musicians, many of whom had fled Nazi Germany.

The famous conductor, Arturo Toscanini, went to Palestine specially to conduct this orchestra. Pnina Salzman was invited to be its solo pianist. She gave dozens of concerts with the orchestra throughout Palestine and the Middle East and she achieved great prominence.

In 1963 she became the first Israeli to be invited to play in the USSR and in 1994, the first Israeli pianist invited to play in China.

Besides performing as a soloist, she was a member of the Israel Piano Quartet.

She was a Professor and the head of the piano department at Tel Aviv University and served on the jury of many piano competitions, including the Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Marguerite Long and Paloma O'Shea Santander International Piano Competition.

She taught piano to many students, including Dror Elimelech, Nimrod David Pfeffer, Elisha Abas, Inbar Rothschild, Iddo Bar-Shai and Yossi Reshef.

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