Pnina Salzman

Pnina Salzman was born in 1922 in Tel Aviv

Pnina Salzman was born in Tel Aviv in 1922. Her mother Lea was a kindergarten teacher and her father Shmuel was an accountant. Her parents loved music and encouraged her piano studies from childhood.

The pianist Alfred Cortot heard her play in 1932, while she studied at the Shulamit Conservatory, and invited her to study in Paris. She graduated from the Ecole Normale de Musique and then studied with Magda Tagliaferro at the Conservatoire de Paris. There she won the Premier Prix de Piano in 1938.

In 1939 she first played with the orchestra that later became the Israel Philharmonic. World War II kept her in the country, and she performed with the orchestra in Palestine and Egypt. During the War of Independence she played for soldiers, and her younger brother Yair was killed in that war.

She premiered Israeli works by Paul Ben-Haim, Marc Lavry and Mordecai Seter. In 1963 she became the first Israeli pianist to play in the USSR. She joined Tel Aviv University in 1969, became a full professor in 1973 and headed its piano department.

She served as a judge at the Rubinstein Competition and other piano competitions. She received the Israel Prize for music in 2006 and died that year. A street in Tel Aviv was named after her in 2021.