The Eos Ensemble joins us tonight for a wonderful program entitled “Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel.” The concert includes Debussy’s early piano trio, evoking the carefree salons of Paris in 1880, as well as Ravel’s masterfully poignant and virtuosic trio, written during the turmoil of WWI when he surveyed the horrors of war as an ambulance driver.
Pianist Gwendolyn Mok, renowned Ravel scholar and interpreter will perform selections from Ravel’s “Miroirs” which she has recorded, while Craig Reiss and Thalia Moore will present several delightful musical bon-bons including the “Blues” from Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano and Faure’s soaring “Elegie.”
Program
Piano Trio in G Major (1880) Claude Debussy
Largo for Piano and Cello (1846) Frederic Chopin
Selections from “Miroirs” for Piano (1905) Maurice Ravel
“Blues” from Sonata for Violin and Piano (1922)
“The Girl with the Flaxen Hair” (1910) Claude Debussy
“Elegy” for Cello and Piano, Op. 24 (1880) Gabriel Faure
Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello (1914) Maurice Ravel
The Eos Ensemble is an exciting chamber music group featuring musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. Through the intimacy of chamber music, these talented musicians thrill audiences with artistry normally reserved for the grand canvas of opera. The ensemble presents concerts of wide ranging musical styles and instrumental combinations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
Craig Reiss has been a member of the San Francisco Opera and Associate Principal Second Violin of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra since 1993. He has been a featured soloist with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Oakland Civic Orchestra, Master Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra, the Nova Vista Symphony, the Central Massachusetts Symphony, as well as the Vallejo Symphony. He is also director of the Eos Ensemble, an exciting chamber music group comprised mainly of members of the San Francisco Opera orchestra whose goal is to present concerts of wide ranging musical styles and instrumental combinations. The Eos Ensemble performs regularly throughout the Bay Area; they have also received grants to do educational programming and were featured on the national radio program “West Coast Live.” Mr. Reiss earned his Bachelor of Music degree while working with Rafael Druian at Boston University and in 1987 became an Associate of the Royal College of Music in London where he studied with Trevor Williams. He has participated in music festivals at Tanglewood, Spoleto, the Colorado Music Festival, and was Associate Concertmaster and featured soloist with the National Repertory Orchestra.
Thalia Moore (cello) is a native of Washington D.C. She began her cello studies with Robert Hofmekler, and after only 5 years of study appeared as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. After two years’ study with Christopher Rex in Philadelphia, she enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music as a scholarship student of Lynn Harrell, and received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in 1979 and 1980. While at Juilliard, she was the recipient of the Walter and Elsie Naumberg Scholarship and won first prize in the National Arts and Letters String Competition.
Ms. Moore has been Associate Principal Cellist of the San Francisco Opera Orchestrasince 1982 and a member of the cello section in the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra since 1989. She has continued to concertize extensively, appearing as soloist at Avery Fisher Hall (Lincoln Center), Carnegie Recital Hall, Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, Herbst Theater (San Francisco), and San Francisco Legion of Honor, among others. She has performed as guest artist at the Olympic Music Festival (Seattle), the Grand Teton Music Festival, Festival Mozaic in San Luis Obispo (baroque cello), and the Music in the Vineyards Chamber Music Festival. In 1991, Ms. Moore appeared in the last episode of the TV series Midnight Caller, and in 1993 was featured as soloist with the San Francisco Chamber Symphony under the direction of Roger Norrington. In 1996, she performed one of the first Bay Area performances of the composer’s version of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variationswith the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. In 1998, she was named a Cowles Visiting Artist at Grinnell College, Iowa, and in 1999 and 2001 won election to the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
As a member of the new music groups Earplay and the Empyrean Ensemble, she has recorded works by Mario Davidovsky, Maria Niederberger, Ross Bauer, Cindy Cox, Jorge Liderman, Kurt Rohde, and David Rakowski. She has presented numerous premieres of works, including the 2005 world premiere of Laws of Motion, a concerto by Richard Festinger written especially for her.
Dr. Gwendolyn Mok serves as the Coordinator of Keyboard Studies. One of the leading experts in the piano music of Maurice Ravel, she has appeared with the world’s foremost orchestras and in major concert halls since her 1988 debut with the London Symphony Orchestra in the Barbican. She is a frequent soloist with the great orchestras of Europe and Asia and has recorded with The Philharmonia and The London Philharmonic for Cala records. Ravel Revealed, recorded on an 1875 Erard piano of the complete solo piano works of Ravel for MSR, has been critically acclaimed and is regularly broadcast in the United States and in England on the BBC. Dr. Mok has performed and recorded as well with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Group for Contemporary Music, and the Empyrean Ensemble. She is invited regularly to adjudicate major competitions, including The Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and most recently served on an international panel of jurors for the Russian Piano Music Competition in San José. She has taught at the Royal College of Music, Dartington International Summer School, Welsh College of Music and Drama, and the San Francisco Conservatory. Dr. Mok received her BA from Yale University, where she studied with Donald Currier and Claude Frank, and her MM and DMA from State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she studied with Gilbert Kalish. Dr. Mok was a recipient of a grant from the French Ministry of Culture to work with Vlado Perlemuter from 1994-1995, who passed onto her his knowledge of Ravel; Perlemuter was Ravel’s student from 1927-1928 and was one of the world’s leading authorities of his music.
