The world-famous piano duo Eden and Tamir, performed for more than 50 years and gave between 1955-2006 over 5000 performances. as soloists with orchestras, in recitals, on television and radio and in various festivals.
Bracha and Alexander met in 1951 as students of Prof. Alfred Schroeder at the New Jerusalem Conservatory (now the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance). Their teacher was the one who encouraged them to play together, just as Artur Schnabel had with his student-assistant Alfred Schroeder. In1955 the Eden-Tamir duo received a scholarship to participate at the Aspen Festival and study with Vronsky and Babin. Two years later they won the first prize in the Vercelli Duo Competition in Italy.
In 1958 the duo participated in "The Ed Sullivan of Israeli Stars" which was organized by Ed Sullivan, an American television star. Among the talents that participated in the show was also a 13-year-old violinist –
Itzhak Perlman. From then on Eden-Tamir Duo became a success story.
More than 50 years on stage
More than 5000 performances in recitals, as soloists with orchestras, television and radio programs, festivals and concert-lectures
Orchestras:
Israel Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, New York Phil., Mexico City Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, Orchestre Passdeloup Paris, Boston Symph.Orch., Hamburg Radio Orchestra, Basel Symphony Orch., London Symphony Orch, Scottish National Symph.,RAI Radio Rome Symph. Orch., Athens Orchestre National, Haifa Symphony, Santa Cecilia Orch. Moscow Chamber Orchestra, NHK Tokyo, Gurzenich Orchester-Cologne. Bournemouth Symph.Orch. , Liverpool Symph.Orch., London Sinfonia, Halle Orch, Hong Kong Phil., Singapore Symph Orch.,Orquesta Filharmonica de Madrid…
Conductors
Sergiu Celibidache, Paul Paray, Zubin Mehta, Erich Leinsdorf, Adrian Boult, Leonard Bernstein, Sergiu Comissiona, Mendi Roan, Yuri Ahronovitch, Gary Bertini, Charles Munch, Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez, Sidney Harth, Boris Brott, Simon Rattle, Moshe Atzmon, Henryk Czyz, Paul Kletzki……….
Festivals:
Tanglewood, Bath, Edinburgh, Aspen, Israel, Warsaw Autumn, Wiener Festwochen, BBC Proms, Gaming-Austria, Summer Nights-St.Petersburg
Records-LPs and CDs: Decca-CRD-Hed Artzi
Complete works by Mozart, Complete works by Schubert, Complete works by Rachmaninoff, Complete works by Brahms, Brahms-The Four Symphonies, Stravinsky-The Rite of Spring, Works by Liszt, Lutoslawski, Milhaud, Britten, Schumann, Poulenc, Bartok, Ravel, Debussy, Beethoven... Concerti by: Bach , Mozart, Mendelssohn, Czerny, Bartok, Poulenc, Tal Zimmerman, Milhaud…
Bracha Eden was born in Jerusalem in 1928, daughter of Judith and Chaim Lochinski-Or who immigrated to Israel in 1919 on the ship "Ruslan" which was considered the harbinger that opened the third Aliyah. Bracha Lochinski-Or studied piano at the New Jerusalem Conservatory and her teachers were Ida Rosen and Josef Tal graduated from the Gymnasia Rehavia High School.
In 1946 Bracha married Gamliel Ende-Eden.
Alexander Tamir - Alik, son of Dr. Noah and Fenia Wolkowyski was born in 1931 in Vilna, Poland (now the capital of Lithuania).
Alik began studying music at the age of 5.
In 1941, when the Germans entered Vilna his family was forced to move to the ghetto. His father was a member of a cultural club with Abba Kovner and Abraham Sutzkever. He wrote in Polish a poem about Ponary - the execution site of the Jews of Vilna. The poet Shmerke Kaczerginski translated the song into Yiddish and 11-year-old Alik Wolkowyski composed the song which won a prize in a composition competition in the ghetto. The song "Ponar - Shtiler, Shtiler" became one of the symbols of the Holocaust.
Tamir was liberated in 1945 and that same year he emigrated to Israel, where he studied piano in Tel Aviv with Eliyahu Rodiakov and composition with Yitzhak Edel. He graduated from "Geula" High School.
In 1948 he participated in the War of Independence.