Erez Bahar

Israeli guitarist-pianist Itamar Erez, member of American- Turkish Sufi multi-instrumentalist Omar Faruk Tekbilek band, revisits some of his best compositions in an intimate setting in his album New Dawn, a duo with fellow Israeli percussionist Yshai Afterman, a disciple of master Israeli percussionist Zohar Fresco. Tough Erez is the composer of all the pieces, except Afterman solo, the two share equal leading roles, demonstrating an almost telepathic interplay.

There have been few recordings of all three of Grieg's beguiling violin sonatas, and with the exception of the sublime Augustin Dumay/Maria-João Pires recording, most of them have been negligible. There have been still fewer recordings of arrangements of his charming piano miniatures by Joseph Achron and nearly all of them have been negligible. So perhaps one can be forgiven for approaching this disc by violinist Hagai Shaham and pianist Arnon Erez coupling all three sonatas plus six song arrangements with more than casual curiosity: could this be the recording that finally puts the works on the musical map?

Emanuel Gruber and Arnon Erez's classic account of Beethoven's music for cello and piano has been remastered for this 2-CD release. The Jerusalem Post called Gruber "one of our great artists" citing "his extraordinary capacity for projecting the deepest meaning of the music". Gruber was awarded the Pablo Casals prize by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Arnon Erez has been the head of the Chamber Music Department at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University for nearly two decades. With Emanuel Gruber, Erez has recorded the complete cello and piano Sonatas by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.