WILLIAM WOLFRAM was a silver medalist at both the William Kapell and the Naumburg International Piano Competitions and a bronze medalist at the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. Wolfram has appeared with many of the greatest orchestras of the world and has developed a special reputation as the rare concerto soloist who is also equally versatile and adept as a recitalist, accompanist and chamber musician. In all of these genres, he is highly sought after for his special focus on the music of Franz Liszt and Beethoven and is a special champion for the music of modernist 20th century American composers.
His concerto debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony under the baton of Leonard Slatkin was the first in a long succession of appearances and career relationships with numerous American conductors and orchestras. He has appeared with the San Francisco, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Seattle and New Jersey symphonies, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the National Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, and the Grand Teton and Obispo Mozart festival orchestras, among many others.
He enjoys regular and ongoing close associations with the Dallas Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra. Conductors with whom he has worked include Jerzy Semkow, Joseph Silverstein, Mark Wigglesworth, Jeffrey Tate, Vladimir Spivakov, Gerard Schwarz, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Jeffrey Kahane, James Judd, Roberto Minczuk, Stefan Sanderling, JoAnn Falletta, James Paul, Osmo Vanska, and Carlos Kalmar. Abroad, Wolfram has appeared with the BBC Symphony Orchestra of London, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the RTE Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (Dublin), the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Bergen Philharmonic (Norway), the Beethovenhalle Orchestra Bonn, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Zagreb and Daejeon Philharmonics, and many others.
An enthusiastic supporter of new music, he has collaborated with and performed music by composers such as Aaron Jay Kernis, Kenneth Frazelle, Marc Andre Dalbavie, Kenji Bunch and Paul Chihara. His world premiere performance of the Chihara re-orchestration of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with the Milwaukee Symphony under the baton of Andreas Delfs, was met with great critical attention and acclaim. Other highlights include several chamber music collaborations, including recitals and recordings with Oscar Shumsky, recitals with Harvey Shapiro and numerous collaborations with Leonard Rose. He also performed Richard Strauss’s setting of the Tennyson poem Enoch Arden with the Oscar-winning actress Louise Rainer, and with actor Jeff Steitzer.
Wolfram has also performed as a guest artist with prominent ballet companies including ABT, Pittsburgh Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Carolina Ballet and Boston Ballet, working with noted choreographers including Jiri Kylian, Edward Villella, Robert Weiss, and Agnes De Mille.
Wolfram has extensive experience in the recording studio. He has recorded four titles on the Naxos label in his series of Franz Liszt Opera Transcriptions, two other chamber music titles for Naxos with violinist Philippe Quint (music of Miklos Rosza and John Corigliano), and he has recorded the music of Earl Kim with piano and orchestra – the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland behind him. For the Albany label, he recorded the piano concertos of Edward Collins with Marin Alsop and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He most recently recorded the Bach Goldberg Variations on the PlayClassics label.
As educator and teacher, Wolfram is a long-standing member of the piano faculty of Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina and a regular featured guest at the Colorado College Music Festival in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He is on the piano faculty at the acclaimed Manhattan School of Music.
In print and other media, Wolfram was the focus of a full chapter in Joseph Horowitz’s book, The Ivory Trade: Music and the Business of Music, at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. On television, he was a featured pianist in the documentary of the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition.
A graduate of The Juilliard School, William Wolfram resides in New York City and is a Yamaha artist.