David Finckel is co-artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Personal:
Married to Wu Han
One daughter

Background:
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 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. In the 2004-05 season, Wu Han and David Finckel appeared with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in a performance of the Beethoven Triple Concerto. In February 2006, the duo will make their Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center recital debut.

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. All the 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 Web site 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 next ArtistLed recording, “Russian Classics,” featuring works by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich, received BBC Music Magazine’s coveted “Editor’s Choice” award. The 2005-06 season sees ArtistLed’s eighth release, featuring the cello sonatas of Johannes Brahms.

In recognition of their widespread contributions to the field of chamber music and their artistic excellence both on and off stage, David Finckel and Wu Han were named Artistic Directors of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in 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 La Jolla SummerFest.

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, CNN’s Turner Entertainment Report, and European Business News. They have also been frequent guests on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, Minnesota Public Radio’s 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 Andre Previn; their recitals feature a growing number of works written specifically for them by such distinguished American composers as Bruce Adolphe and Augusta Read Thomas, and the Russian-born composer Lera Auerbach.

For many years, David Finckel and Wu Han taught alongside the late Isaac Stern at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center. They appear annually on the Aspen Music Festival’s Distinguished Artist Master Class series, and in various educational outreach programs across the country.