Wu Han, Philip Setzer and David Finckel to open Chamber Society Series on September 23

by Daniel Hathaway

The famous piano trio with no name of its own, consisting of pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer and cellist David Finckel, will launch the sixty-fifth season of the Cleveland Chamber Music Society at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights on Tuesday, September 23 at 7:30. The program will include Beethoven’s Trio in G, op. 1, no. 2, Shostakovich’s Trio No. 2 in e, op. 67 & Mendelssohn’s Trio in c, op. 66. A 6:30 pm pre-concert lecture will feature WCLV’s Robert Conrad in a talk entitled “Not Your Father’s Radio Station.”

Interesting relationships connect the three performers. Wu Han and David Finckel are husband and wife as well as partners who run the Music from Menlo chamber music series in California and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. And until the end of the 2012-2013 season, Finckel and Philip Setzer had played together in the Emerson String Quartet since 1976. Finckel has since set out on his own to pursue other projects, among them, continuing to perform with the Lincoln Center group, which will bring him back to Cleveland for a concert on the CCMS Series on January 13.

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Conversations with David Finckel, Wu Han and Philip Setzer

by Daniel Hathaway

David Finckel, Wu Han & Philip Setzer

The trio with no name, but made up of three eminent musicians (violinist Philip Setzer, cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han) plays Schubert Trios on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series on Tuesday, March 23 at Fairmount Temple Auditorium. Finckel and Setzer play in the Emerson Quartet; Finkel and Wu Han are husband and wife, owners of the recording company ArtistLed and co-artistic directors both of Chamber Music at Lincoln Center and Music at Menlo in California. Their Schubert tour derived from an ArtistLed recording project. Due to their busy schedules, we spoke with the trio in three different conversations. We reached David Finckel in Vienna, Wu Han in New York between rehearsals, and spoke with Philip Setzer soon after he returned from Europe.

DAVID FINCKEL

DH: I just read the interview the three of you had with Classical Archives’ artistic director Nolan Gasser in February, and you touched on every subject I could possibly think to ask you about!

DF: That was quite some interview, wasn’t it.

DH: It must have taken some time to do, but I’ll try to find some interesting questions for you. First off, congratulations on the 13th anniversary of ArtistLed. How is the company doing in the current economic climate?

DF: Fine, because our decimal point is in another place. We manage to make ends meet because we have a loyal following. We keep our costs low without having it affect quality at all and we always manage to recoup our expenses through the sales of the recordings, which I think is the golden rule. So as long as we can do that, we can just keep going ahead and making more recordings.