Wallfisch Trio

Arnon Erez studied with Arie Vardi, and is a graduate of Tel Aviv University. He undertook advanced studies of chamber music with the Guarneri Quartet in the U.S.A., and currently heads the Chamber Music Department at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel Aviv University. Erez is highly acclaimed for his sensitivity and virtuosity and is especially noted for his duo partnership with violinist Hagai Shaham. Their fruitful collaboration crowned them with the first prize at the Munich ARD International Duo Competition in 1990. Erez also works with Shlomo Mintz, Gil Shaham, Maxim Vengerov, David Garret, Arnold Steinhardt, Raphael Wallfisch, and Frans Helmerson.


He has performed in numerous major concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, New York; Beethoven Halle, Bonn; Alte Oper, Frankfurt; Herkulessall, Munich; Musikverein, Vienna; the New Auditorium du Louvre in Paris and London's Wigmore Hall. Arnon Erez has appeared in major festivals around the world, and as a soloist he has performed with various orchestras including Israel Philharmonic. In addition, he has given many recitals and recorded for radio and television stations in Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Israel, Turkey, Mexico and Brazil. Raphael Wallfisch is one of the most celebrated cellists performing on the international stage. He was born in London into a family of distinguished musicians, his mother the cellist Anita Lasker- Wallfisch and his father the pianist Peter Wallfisch.


At an early age, Raphael was greatly inspired by hearing Zara Nelsova play, and, guided by a succession of fine teachers including Amaryllis Fleming, Amadeo Baldovino and Derek Simpson, it became apparent that the cello was to be his life's work. While studying with the great Russian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky in California, he was chosen to perform chamber music with Jascha Heifetz in the informal recitals that Piatigorsky held at his home.

Hagai Shaham began to study the violin at the age of six and was the last student of the renowned Ilona Feher. An annual recipient of America-Israel Cultural Foundation Awards since 1976, Shaham has won numerous first prizes in competitions. In 1990 Shaham and his duo partner pianist Arnon Erez won First Prize in the Munich International Competition (ARD), the first time in nearly twenty years this prestigious prize had been awarded to a violin-piano duo. Shaham made his London debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1990 and in Wigmore Hall in 1996, since when he has performed in most of Europe's most prestigious venues. Invitations to International festivals have taken him to Schleswig-Holstein, Rheingau, Montpellier and Israel. Hagai Shaham toured with the English Chamber Orchestra and Shlomo Mintz in 2006 and also together with Mintz and the Chamber Orchestra of the Concertgebouw in 2007. Hagai Shaham has recorded the long neglected violin music of Joseph Achron, works for violin and piano by Jeno Hubay, and all four Hubay concertos, the violin sonatas by Edvard Grieg, works by Ernest Bloch and Paul Ben-Haim, Brahms' Hungarian Dances and Leo Weiner's sonatas for violin and piano. His most recent releases are the Dohnanyi and Janacek sonatas and Ferdinand David's little known violin concerto with the BBC Scottish and Martyn Brabbins conducting. In 2009 Hagai Shaham and his duo-partner Arnon Erez formed a piano trio with cellist Raphael Wallfisch. Hagai Shaham is founder of the Ilona Feher Foundation and a much sought after masterclass teacher in Europe as well as in the USA. Shaham was violin professor at the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California, USA from 2007 and has recently returned to Israel to teach at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel Aviv University.

Mendelssohn Piano Trios Op.49 & Op.66 and Schumann Five Canons Op.56