Amiram Ganz

Violinist Amiram Ganz was born in Montevideo. He began to study violin in Uruguay with Israel Chorberg, the Leopold Auer-pupil Ilya Fidlon, and Jorge Risi. At the age of eleven he won the Jeunesses Musicales Contest and then continued his studies with Richard Burgin in the U.S.A. and Alberto Lysy at the International Academy of Chamber Music in Rome. Studying on a scholarship at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory between 1974 and 1979 he met Victor Pikaisen, who became his teacher. As finalist and award winner of several international competitions (Long-Thibaud/Paris, ARD/Munich, etc.), he became first concert master of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg in 1980. From 1987 until the foundation of the Altenberg Trio he was the violinist of the Shostakovitch Trio, appearing at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Tchaikovsky Conservatory Moscow, etc. In 1994 he became a founding member of the Altenberg Trio of Vienna with pianist Claus-Christian Schuster and cellist Martin Hornstein, who was succeeded in 2004 by Alexander Gebert. With the Altenberg Trio Ganz performes in Europe and North America.
As a soloist he has collaborated with conductors Alain Lombard, Günter Kehr, Theodor Guschlbauer, Marc Soustrot, James Judd, Hiroyuki Iwaki, Nicolas Pasquet und others. He teaches violin and chamber music in Vienna Conservatory (Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität).  Amiram Ganz plays a violin built in Saluzzo in 1686 by Goffredo Cappa (1644-1717); it was made available to the trio by an anonymous patron.