Three at Tannery: David Finckel and Wu Han; Todd Palmer, Elizabeth Futral, and Ran Dank; and the Harlem String Quartet, by Michael Miller

Wu Han and David Finckel. Photo Christian Steiner.

Tannery Pond Concerts

September 22, 2012, 6 pm

David Finckel, Cello
Wu Han, pianist

Beethoven – Sonata in G minor, Opus 5, No. 2, for cello and piano
Brahms – Sonata in E minor, Opus 38, for cello and piano
Debussy – Sonata I, in D minor, for cello and piano
Shostakovich – Sonata in D minor, Opus 40, for cello and piano

On looking over this program of familiar works for cello and piano, the last thing one would call it is challenging. Yet, this past Sunday evening, David Finckel and Wu Han made it into something extremely challenging and enlightening. The duo — a husband-wife team, as is well-known — put so much feeling and energy into each piece that each became a world unto itself, formed by such radically different personalities, that it seemed miraculous that the players could make the transition from one to the other within a single evening. As for listening to such performances, I found myself so deeply immersed in these varied planets, that the journey between them seemed vast. Finckel and Wu Han approached them as differing thought processes in different languages. Even though it is obvious enough that Brahms spoke Beethoven, it seemed here to be a highly evolved dialect, from a different city, with its own highly characteristic street slang, which gave its own intense coloration to the civilized poetic diction of the compositions.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!