An Evening with David Finckel and Wu Han
Limited Availability This event has passedSun, Jan 28, 2024, 5:00 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
CMS’s Artistic Directors take the spotlight for a special evening, opening with Debussy’s iconic Cello Sonata.
Composed for the duo, Bruce Adolphe’s sublime Couple leads seamlessly to Shostakovich’s gripping Sonata, a classic of the repertoire. The exuberant Dvořák Piano Quartet concludes the evening, in which David and Wu Han are joined by two stellar members of the current Bowers Program.
Program
Claude Debussy
(1862–1918)Sonata for Cello and Piano
(1915)Bruce Adolphe
(b. 1955)Couple for Cello and Piano
(1998)Dmitri Shostakovich
(1906–1975)Sonata in D minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 40
(1934)Antonín Dvořák
(1841–1904)Quartet in E-flat major for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 87
(1889)
Wu Han
Richard Lin
Timothy Ridout
David Finckel
Pianist Wu Han, recipient of Musical America’s Musician of the Year Award, enjoys a multi-faceted musical life that encompasses artistic direction, performing, and recording at the highest levels. Co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2004 as well as Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Silicon Valley’s innovative chamber music festival Music@Menlo since 2002, she also serves as Artistic Advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns series and Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts, and as Artistic Director for La Musica in Sarasota, Florida. Her recent concert activities have taken her from New York’s Lincoln Center stages to the most important concert halls in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In addition to countless performances of virtually the entire chamber repertoire, her concerto performances include appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, and the Aspen Festival Orchestra. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of ArtistLed, classical music’s first artist-directed, internet-based recording label, which has released her performances of the staples of the cello-piano duo repertoire with cellist David Finckel. Her more than 80 releases on ArtistLed, CMS Live, and Music@Menlo LIVE include masterworks of the chamber repertoire with numerous distinguished musicians. Wu Han’s educational activities include overseeing CMS’s Bowers Program and the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. A recipient of the prestigious Andrew Wolf Award, she was mentored by some of the greatest pianists of our time, including Lilian Kallir, Rudolf Serkin, and Menahem Pressler. Married to cellist David Finckel since 1985, Wu Han divides her time between concert touring and residences in New York City and Westchester County.
Richard Lin rose to international prominence after winning the Gold Medal at the 2018 Indianapolis International Violin Competition. He is also a top prizewinner of the Sendai, Joseph Joachim, Singapore, and Michael Hill International Violin Competitions.Since his Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium recital debut in 2022, he has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras worldwide, including the NDR Radiophilharmonie, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, and the Taiwan Philharmonic, among others. He is also an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. His recordings include albums on Azica Records and Fontec, and he is on the faculty of the National Taipei University of Education. Lin performs on the 1714 Antonio Stradivarius “Joachim-Ma,” generously loaned by the YAGEO Foundation, Taiwan.
Violist Timothy Ridout has appeared with orchestras including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and the Netherlands Philharmonic, working alongside conductors such as Sakari Oramo, Sir András Schiff, Sylvain Cambreling, and Sir Simon Rattle. A committed chamber musician, he performs regularly at Wigmore Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and the Musikverein, with partners including Janine Jansen, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma. A champion of new music, Ridout premiered Mark Simpson's Viola Concerto Hold Your Heart in Your Teeth with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Robin Ticciati. He records with Harmonia Mundi, and has made appearances at the BBC Proms, Verbier Festival, and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Ridout is a former BBC New Generation Artist, an alum of CMS’s Bowers program, and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellow. He performs on a viola by Peregrino di Zanetto, c.1565–75, on generous loan from a patron of Beare’s International Violin Society.
Co-Artistic Director of CMS since 2004, cellist David Finckel’s dynamic musical career has included performances on the world’s stages in the roles of recitalist, chamber artist, and orchestral soloist. The first American student of Mstislav Rostropovich, he joined the Emerson String Quartet in 1979, and during 34 seasons garnered nine Grammy Awards and the Avery Fisher Prize. His quartet performances and recordings include quartet cycles of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorák, Brahms, Bartók, and Shostakovich, as well as collaborative masterpieces and commissioned works. In 1997, he and pianist Wu Han founded ArtistLed, the first internet-based, artist-controlled classical recording label. ArtistLed’s catalog of more than 20 releases includes the standard literature for cello and piano, plus works composed for the duo by George Tsontakis, Gabriela Lena Frank, Bruce Adolphe, Lera Auerbach, Edwin Finckel, Augusta Read Thomas, and Pierre Jalbert. In 2022, Music@Menlo, an innovative summer chamber music festival in Silicon Valley founded and directed by David and Wu Han, celebrated its 20th season. As a young student, David was winner of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s junior and senior divisions, resulting in two performances with the orchestra. Having taught extensively with the late Isaac Stern in America, Israel, and Japan, he is currently a professor at both the Juilliard School and Stony Brook University, and oversees both CMS’s Bowers Program and Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute. David’s 100 online Cello Talks, lessons on cello technique, are viewed by an international audience of musicians. Along with Wu Han, he was the recipient of Musical America’s 2012 Musicians of the Year Award.