FRANZ SCHUBERT
Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 99

FRANZ SCHUBERT
Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 100

In recent seasons, David Finckel and Wu Han have appeared frequently with violinist Philip Setzer—David Finckel’s colleague in the legendary Emerson String Quartet for more than three decades—in performances of the piano trio literature. The trio has been met with critical acclaim worldwide. Of their performance of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Utah Symphony, Reichel Recommends wrote, “It used to be the Beaux Arts Trio that other piano trios had to look up to and attempt to emulate. Now it’s the Han-Setzer-Finckel triumvirate that is the standard bearer.” In addition to their concert activities, the artists have recorded the piano trios of Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Dvořák on the ArtistLed label.

Wu Han, Philip Setzer, & David Finckel

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 Founding (former) Artistic Co-Director of Music@Menlo, Silicon Valley’s innovative chamber music festival, she has also served as Artistic Advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns series and is the Artistic Director 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. to 2018, she led an intensive chamber music studio at the Aspen Music Festival and School.

Violinist Philip Setzer, a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and began studying violin at the age of five with his parents, both former violinists in the Cleveland Orchestra. He continued his studies with Josef Gingold and Rafael Druian, and later at the Juilliard School with Oscar Shumsky. In 1967, Mr. Setzer won second prize at the Marjorie Merriweather Post Competition in Washington, DC, and in 1976 received a Bronze Medal at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels.  Currently serving as a Distinguished Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at SUNY Stony Brook, Mr. Setzer also serves on the violin faculty and is the Artistic Director of Strings Chamber Music at the Cleveland Institute of Music.   He was Since 2024, he has served as the Artistic Director of the Manchester Music Festival in Vermont.  He is also the Director of the Shouse Institute, the teaching division of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit.  A versatile musician with innovative vision and dedication to keep the art form of the string quartet alive and relevant, Mr. Setzer was the co-creator of  the Emerson’s two highly-praised collaborative theater productions: The Noise of Time, premiered at Lincoln Center in 2001 and directed by Simon McBurney, was a multi-media production about the life of Shostakovich and was performed 60 times throughout the world; in 2016, Mr. Setzer teamed  with writer-director James Glossman for the Emerson’s latest music/theater project, Shostakovich and the Black Monk: A Russian Fantasy.  Premiered at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Black Monk was performed at the Tanglewood Music Festival, Princeton University, Wolf Trap, Ravinia Festival, Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, Korea, and Stony Brook University.  Mr. Setzer also tours and records the piano trio repertoire with David Finckel and Wu Han.  He plays a violin made for him in 2011 by Samuel Zygmuntowicz.

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 the CMS’s Bowers Program and previously oversaw 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.