DAVID FINCKEL & WU HAN

2007/ 08 Full Biography (772 words)

Cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han rank among the most esteemed and influential classical musicians in the world today. The talent, energy, imagination and dedication they bring to their multi-faceted endeavors as concert performers, recording artists, educators, artistic administrators and cultural entrepreneurs, go unmatched. Their duo performances have garnered superlatives from the press, public, and presenters alike. London's Musical Opinion said of their Wigmore Hall debut: "They enthralled both myself and the audience with performances whose idiomatic command, technical mastery and unsullied integrity of vision made me think right back to the days of Schnabel and Fournier, Solomon and Piatigorsky."

The duo’s engagements take them to some of the most prestigious venues and concert series across the United States, including San Francisco Performances, Stanford Lively Arts, New York’s Lincoln Center, Morgan Library, Town Hall, and 92nd Street Y, Washington’s Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institute and Dumbarton Oaks, Wisconsin’s Union Theater, Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater, UCLA’s Performing Arts Series, Atlanta’s Spivey Hall, the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, Boston’s Gardner Museum, Princeton University Concerts, the University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society, New Orleans Friends of Chamber Music, Santa Barbara’s UCSB Arts and Letters, and Aspen’s Harris Concert Hall. The duo is regularly featured in the country’s leading music festivals. Recent highlights include performances at the Aspen Music Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Chamber Music Northwest.

The duo’s international engagements have taken them to Mexico, Canada, the Far East, Scandinavia and continental Europe to unanimous critical acclaim. Highlights from recent seasons include their debuts in Germany and at Finland’s Kuhmo Festival, their presentation of the complete Beethoven cycle in Tokyo, and their signature all-Russian program at London’s Wigmore Hall.
David Finckel and Wu Han’s wide-ranging musical activities also include the launch of ArtistLed, the first musician-directed and Internet-based recording company, which is celebrating its tenth year. All nine ArtistLed recordings, including their release of The Complete Works of Beethoven for Cello and Piano, have received critical acclaim and are available via the company’s website at www.artistled.com. In Time magazine, Terry Teachout hailed their Tchaikovsky disc as “a performance that ranks among the great chamber music recordings of the postwar era.” The ArtistLed recording, “Russian Classics,” featuring works by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich, received BBC Music magazine’s coveted "Editor's Choice" award. The two most recent additions to the ArtistLed catalogue feature David Finckel’s recording of the Dvorák Concerto and Augusta Read Thomas’s Ritual Incantations (world premiere recording), and Wu Han's first full-length solo recording for the label, "Russian Recital," featuring works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Scriabin.

David Finckel and Wu Han have served as Artistic Directors of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2004. They are also the founders and Artistic Directors of Music@Menlo, a chamber music festival in Silicon Valley that has garnered international acclaim since its inception in 2003. Prior to launching Music@Menlo, Wu Han and David Finckel served for three seasons as Artistic Directors of SummerFest La Jolla.

David Finckel and Wu Han have been the subject of numerous feature stories around the globe in publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Toronto Star, New York Newsday, The Mercury News, Billboard, The Strad, BBC Music Magazine, Time Out London, and Tokyo’s Ongaku-no-Tomo. On television, they have appeared on NBC Nightly News, A & E Network’s Breakfast with the Arts, New York Channel 13’s New York Voices, CNN’s Turner Entertainment Report and European Business News. They have also been frequent guests on American Public Media’s Performance Today, Saint Paul Sunday, and other popular classical radio programs.

The duo’s repertoire spans virtually the entire literature for cello and piano, with an equal emphasis on the classics and the contemporaries. Their modern repertoire includes all the significant works, from Prokofiev and Britten to Alfred Schnittke and André Previn. Their commitment to new music has brought commissioned works by Bruce Adolphe, Lera Auerbach, and Augusta Read Thomas to audiences around the world, with a new work for cello and piano by award-winning composer Pierre Jalbert scheduled for the 2007-2008 season. Last season, with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra (Columbus, OH), they appeared in the world premiere of Compadrazgo, a new double concerto by Gabriela Lena Frank composed for David Finckel and Wu Han.

For many years, David Finckel and Wu Han taught alongside the late Isaac Stern at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center. They appeared annually on the Aspen Music Festival’s Distinguished Artist Master Class series, and in various educational outreach programs across the country. David Finckel and Wu Han reside in New York with their fourteen-year-old daughter, Lilian.