Mendelssohn Madness ~ A Bicentenary Concert
George Lopez, piano
Eva Gruesser, violin
Emmanuel Feldman, cello
Program
Piano trio in D minor, Op.49
Molto allegro agitato
Andante con moto tranquuillo
Scherzo: leggiero e vivace
Allegro assai appassionato
Piano trio in C minor, Op.66
Allegro energico e con fuoco
Andante espressivo
Scherzo: molto allegro quasi presto
Allegro appassionato
About the Performers
Eva Gruesser, violinist
Eva Gruesser currently holds the Roger Sessions chair of concertmaster of the American Composers Orchestra and regularly performs with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Ms. Gruesser has performed as soloist, chamber musician and concertmaster throughout North America, Europe and Australia. Eva Gruesser’s recent concert appearances have included a performance as soloist in Evan Chamber’s Concerto for Violin and Irish Fiddle with the American Composers Orchestra at Zankel Hall and a benefit performance at Carnegie Hall of Mahler’s 3rd Symphony with members of leading American orchestras, Mahler for Children with AIDS. In the 2006 - 2007 concert season she performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in collaboration with American Composers Orchestra. Ms. Gruesser was soloist in the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra in Maine and participated in Requiem for Dafur at Carnegie Hall to raise funds for the humanitarian crisis in the Sudan. She performed as soloist in the Barber Violin Concerto with the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra under Kenneth Kiesler and with the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Gruesser has performed as guest concertmaster with many orchestras including the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Stamford Symphony Orchestra and Long Island Philharmonic. Ms. Gruesser was concertmaster of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra from 2002 – 2007.
As first violinist of the Lark Quartet from 1988 to 1996, Eva Gruesser won the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1991 and the Gold Medal at the 1991 Shostakovich International String Quartet Competition in St. Petersburg. She performed with the Lark Quartet on many occasions at Lincoln Center and Weil Hall in New York and the Kennedy Center and Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC. Following the Shostakovich Competition, Ms. Gruesser was invited with the quartet by Gidon Kremer to play at the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria. With the Lark Quartet she also performed at the Sviatoslav Richter Festival at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Schleswig-Holstein Festival and San Miguel de Allende Festival in Mexico. Eva Gruesser has collaborated on commissions with composers Aaron Jay Kernis, Libby Larsen, Penka Kouneva and Jon Deak. Ms. Gruesser was a member of the Da Capo Chamber Players from 1997 until 2001 and served in 2007 on the panel of judges at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition in South Bend, Indiana. She performed with the late Lukas Foss in his Three American pieces for violin and piano at Weil Hall, has recorded works by Martin Bresnick and participated in a Kennedy Center tribute to composer Joan Tower.
Eva Gruesser is a regular guest at summer chamber music festivals including Klangfrühling Schlaining in Austria, where she performed with Austrian piano duo pianists Eduard and Johannes Kutrowatz, Toronto International Chamber Music Festival, Moab Music Festival, Kowmung Music Festival in Australia and Monadnock Music. Ms. Gruesser played in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for 2 years, performed as soloist with the BBC Scottish Orchestra and was a founding member of the Ensemble Modern in Germany. Eva Gruesser’s violin teachers include Wolfgang Marschner, Ilona Feher, Ramy Shevelov, Szymon Goldberg and Zinaida Gilels. She has also worked with Robert Mann, Alexander Schneider, Valentin Berlinsky, Davis Soyer and Bernard Greenhouse. Eva Gruesser graduated summa cum laude from the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik, holds the soloist’s diploma of the Hannover Hochschule für Music and is a graduate of the Juilliard School. She has recorded with Deccca/Argo, Arabesque and New World Records.
George Sebastian Lopez, pianist
Mr. Lopez has been featured across the globe as recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and collaborator. Mr. Lopez received critical acclaim for his interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and has performed the complete cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos in his last two concert seasons. He was invited by the Holland Music Sessions, now one of the top performing arenas for up and coming musicians in Europe, to go on a world tour for which he performed in Paris, London, Cologne, New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and in Los Angeles where he was hailed by the L.A. Times for his "...musical perspective, continuity, and kaleidoscopic colors." He has also performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue to a capacity crowd with the NH Music Festival Orchestra.
His chamber music collaborations have included the Emerson String Quartet, the Rainier Quartet, the Incanto Ensemble of Germany and the Aurea Ensemble of Providence along with members of some of the top orchestras in the country with whom he plays regularly at the New Hampshire Music Festival. He was invited by the Montclaire String Quartet to open their concert season with Brahms Piano Quintet in F Minor at the newly constructed Clay Center for the Arts in Charleston, WV where he is a frequent guest artist. Most recently he performed a recital with cellist Emmanuel Feldman in Boston’s Jordan Hall, giving a world premiere performance of Jan Swafford’s In Time of War for cello and piano.
Mr. Lopez has been an advocate for music education for many years and is a popular lecturer on the arts in New England. He has given lectures for the European Piano Teachers Association in Amsterdam.
He maintains an active studio in NH at the Phillips-Exeter Academy having graduated several students to major conservatories in the US including Juilliard Prep, Oberlin, Manhattan School, Mannes, and University of Southern California.Born in Brooklyn, NY, and raised in Belize to Mayan parents, George Lopez started playing the piano at the fairly late age of 11.Upon returning to the US, he won his first competition at 14 in Texas to play with orchestra and two years later was awarded a full scholarship to the Hartt School of Music. After graduating with honors, he went to Paris on a Franco-American study grant and was given a unanimous First Prize for the Diplome Superieure. He completed his Masters Degree in Amsterdam cum laude.
In addition to the New Hampshire Symphony, George Lopez has appeared with the Granite State Symphony Orchestra, the Midcoast Symphony of Maine, the Fort Smith Symphony in Arkansas, and last October performed Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto in Yverdon, Switzerland. Last November he gave recitals in Switzerland and Holland and just this October played Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. He has premiered a piano concerto especially written for him by Romeo Melloni, an Italian composer from Milan which he recorded with the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra in Prague with Maestro Paul Polivnick. He has just returned from a successful West Coast tour where he performed solo and chamber music concerts as well as masterclasses in San Jose, Seattle and San Francisco. This April he performed at Brown University with reknowned American composer David Amram for a week-long residency there and his recent tour of chamber music concerts and masterclasses in Australia has already garnered a reinvitation to the festival next year.
Emmanuel Feldman, cellist
Hailed by John Williams, Grammy award winning composer and conductor as “an outstanding cellist and truly dedicated artist”, Emmanuel Feldman, enjoys an active career as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, champion and commissioner of new music and educator.With a repertoire ranging from Bach to Ligeti to today’s cutting edge composers, Mr. Feldman has concertized throughout Europe and North America. He has performed as soloist with the Boston Pops, Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Greensboro Festival Orchestra, Boston Philharmonic, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, New England String Ensemble and many others. An avid chamber musician, he was invited to participate in the Marlboro Music Festival and has collaborated with such distinguished artists as Richard Stoltzman, Gilbert Kalish, Robert Levin, Joy Cline-Phinney, Victor Rosenbaum, Jorge Bolet, Lynn Chang, Marcus Thompson, the Borromeo String Quartet, Aurea Ensemble and soloed with world renowned pop and jazz artist Bobby McFerrin in music from McFerrin’s album “Hush”. Following his debut in 2006 on the Bank of America Marquee Celebrity Series, Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe wrote “Emmanuel Feldman was superb in the Bach Solo Suites”. His solo CD on Albany Records “Rider on The Plains” featuring Virgil Thomson’s Cello Concerto was nominated for a 2008 Grammy award for producer Blanton Alspaugh (producer of the year) and was hailed as an “excellent recording…the concerto sounds exhilarating in this bracing and confident performance” by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times. He has also recorded chamber music on the Naxos, Arsis, Zimbel and other labels.
A consummate advocate of new music, he has participated in premieres and first recordings of numerous new compositions by composers Richard Danielpour, Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison, Aaron Kernis, David Diamond, Charles Fussell, Gunther Schuller, John McDonald, Jan Swafford and many others. As co-founder of Cello e Basso (formerly the Axiom Duo) with double bassist Pascale Delache-Feldman, they have been called “a musical Lewis and Clark, opening up new musical territories” by NPR’s Ron Schacter and are dedicated to bringing new music and new musical experiences to audiences worldwide. He has participated in the Pablo Casals Festival, Schlesswig Holstein Musik Festival and was a faculty member at the Yellow Barn Music Festival, the Killington Music Festival and the Summit Music Festival. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music with additional studies at the Paris Conservatory, Mr. Feldman currently is on the cello faculty of Brown University, Tufts University and NEC.
To learn more about Exeter's concert series, please check the Musical Performances calendar page. To learn more about events at Exeter, please check the News & Events section of the website. Or, for a recorded voice line listing upcoming events, dial: (603) 777-4309.
