Yara Bernette (Bernette Epstein) was born in Boston in 1920. Her Russian immigrant family moved to Brazil when she was six months old. She began to study the piano at the age of six with her uncle, Professor José Kliass, pupil of Martin Krause, who in turn had been the pupil and secretary of Franz Liszt, and who was one of the most important musical figures in São Paulo at the time. In 1938 Yara Bernette made her professional debut in a concert with the Municipal Symphony Orchestra and in 1949 made her first appearance in the United States at the New York Town Hall, encouraged by maestros Arthur Rubinstein and Claudio Arrau. The American tour continued through Canada and Latin America: Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia and Argentina. Her European debut was in 1955, when she played in Paris with the Orchestre du Conservatoire de Paris, directed by the Brazilian maestro and composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. On the same tour, she also played in Vienna, Amsterdam and London, where she was presented with the Arnold Bax Memorial Award as the best musical interpreter of the year. 

From 1957 to 1970 she gave numerous recitals and concerts throughout Europe, playing as a soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Philharmonic of Hamburg, and also played in the Far East. In 1961 she represented Brazil in the Second Inter-American Music Festival in Washington, playing Camargo Guarnieri’s Variations on a Theme from the Northeast of Brazil for Piano and Orchestra with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra. 

In addition to being a concert pianist in demand throughout the world, Yara Bernette was also a teacher; in 1972 she was chosen from among one hundred and thirty candidates as piano teacher at the Hamburg Music and Performing Arts School, where she remained for twenty years, supervising students from many countries. 

In the United States Yara Bernette was a jury member in important competitions such as the Van Cliburn International Competition. To commemorate her seventy-fifth birthday she recorded her Portrait for German television, broadcast throughout Germany on August 20, 1995. The commemorations were followed by a recital in Hamburg in which her ex-pupils from the Hochschule took part. In Brazil Yara Bernette frequently played in the main cities. She died in São Paulo in March 2002. Known throughout her career for playing modern and contemporary composers, she played music from the Classical and Romantic periods with the same skill.