PERFORMERS
- Josefina Urraca, piano
- Keir GoGwilt, violin
- Yi Qun Xu, cello
ABOUT THE CONCERT
Ernest Bloch wrote his Three Nocturnes for piano trio in 1924, the year he became a naturalized American citizen, shortly before moving to San Francisco to head its Conservatory. Scored for violin, cello and piano, the set gathers three atmospheric character pieces: the first impressionistic, with exotic scales and ethereal sonorities; the second a lyrical, folk-tinged lullaby touched with canon; the third more restless, with the motoric drive of his early chamber music. A departure from Bloch's overtly Hebraic idiom, the Nocturnes retain his characteristic mysticism and poetry. Bloch (1880-1959), born in Geneva and trained across Europe before emigrating to the United States in 1916, was a composer, conductor and influential teacher who bridged European Romanticism and American musical life.