Bronislav Gimpel

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Bronislav Gimpel (1911–1979) was a Polish-American violinist, and teacher. He was born in Lwow, Poland, to a family of Jewish origin. He died in Los Angeles.

Bronislaw Gimpel started piano and violin lessons with his father at the age of five. At the age of eight, he studied with Moritz Wolfstahl at the Lwow Conservatory. After 1922 he continued his studies with Robert Pollack at the Vienna Conservatory. At the age of fourteen, he played the Goldmark Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic. A year later, an extended concert tour in Italy resulted in a succession of triumphs of historic proportion, with command performances before King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Pope Pius XI, and invitations to play on Paganini’s famous Guarneri and to perform at the grave of the legendary virtuoso. Tours of South America and Europe followed. 1930 he attended the Berlin Hochschule für Musik under the guidance of Prof. Karl Flesch. Thereafter he continued his solo career while holding the lead posts in Könisgberg and Göteborg. The outbreak of the War brought Gimpel to Los Angeles and to the concertmastership of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1942 to the end of the war, Gimpel resumed his solo career in Europe, where he was received, once again, with great acclaim. In 1963, he and Wladyslaw Szpilman formed "The Warsaw Piano Quintet". In 1967 Gimpel accepted a professorship at the University of Connecticut. From 1973 Gimpel was a Professor at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England. In this period of time he resumed his solo concert appearances in Europe, USA and South America.