Wu Han, Piano
Pianist Wu Han, recipient of Musical America’s Musician of the Year Award, the highest honor bestowed by the organization, enjoys a multi-faceted musical life that encompasses performing, recording, and artistic direction at the highest levels.
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 recent 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 the ArtistLed, CMS Live and Music@Menlo LIVE labels include masterworks of the chamber repertoire with numerous distinguished musicians, the latest being Schubert’s Winterreise with baritone Nikolay Borchev.
Currently Artistic Co-Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Music@Menlo, Silicon Valley’s innovative chamber music festival, she also serves as Artistic Advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns series and for Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts, and in 2022, was named Artistic Director of La Musica in Sarasota, Florida.
Passionately dedicated to education for musicians of all ages and experience, Wu Han guides CMS’s Bowers Program, which admits stellar young musicians to the CMS roster for a term of three seasons. Under her artistic direction, through CMS’s performances, education, and recording/broadcast activities, her programming draws more people to chamber music than any other organization of its kind. In recent seasons, she conceived and produced over 270 digital events which sustained chamber music communities across the country. Wu Han also oversees the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, which immerses some forty young musicians every summer in the multi-faceted fabric of the festival. She was privileged to serve on multiple occasions as a faculty member of the late Isaac Stern’s Chamber Music Encounters in Israel, New York and Japan.
A recipient of the prestigious Andrew Wolf Award, Wu Han was mentored by an elite selection of 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.
David Finckel, cello
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 was the winner of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s junior and senior divisions, resulting in two performances with the orchestra. In 1979 he joined the Emerson String Quartet, and during thirty-four seasons garnered nine Grammy Awards and the Avery Fisher Prize. His quartet performances and recordings include quartet cycles of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvořák, Brahms, Bartók, and Shostakovich, as well as collaborative masterpieces and commissioned works.
David Finckel and Wu Han founded ArtistLed, the first internet-based, artist-controlled classical recording label in 1997. 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. His orchestral recordings include both the Dvořák and Harbison concertos.
Artistic Co-Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he also co-founded Music@Menlo in 2003, an innovative summer chamber music festival in Silicon Valley.
David Finckel 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. Passionately dedicated to education for musicians of all ages and experience, he developed a special Resource section of his website (davidfinckelandwuhan.com/resource) to provide, at no cost, a wealth of guidance for students on both music study and careers, as well as invaluable information for arts organizations and individuals on every aspect of concert presenting. David’s 100 online lessons on cello technique, Cello Talks, are viewed by an international audience of musicians (cellotalks.com).
Along with pianist Wu Han, David Finckel was the recipient of Musical America’s Musicians of the Year Award.