David Finckel Cello   

David Finckel is a cellist in the Emerson String Quartet, but has also played to considerable acclaim on his own as a soloist and as partner in a duo with his wife, pianist Wu Han. Born the son of composer Edwin Finckel, David Finckel began his cello studies at an early age, receiving instruction from his father and later with Mstislav Rostropovich. Finckel had already established himself as a solo artist on an international level before joining the Emerson String Quartet, replacing departing cellist Eric Wilson. With Emerson, Finckel has played more than 100 concerts worldwide and participates in the quartet's residencies and recordings for Deutsche Grammophon.

David Finckel and Han founded the label ArtistLed in 1997 in order to have a platform from which to launch their own recordings, which are made under their own control. In 2003 Finckel and Han also founded a chamber music series in the Silicon Valley called Music@Menlo, which has attracted some of the finest East Coast musicians to the west for a round of concerts and workshops and a chance to mingle with their West Coast counterparts. Finckel is regularly involved in the annual Aspen Music Festival, and has given the premieres of works by composers John Harbison, Augusta Read Thomas, and Brad Richter, and has recorded the cello works written by his father for ArtistLed.

© Uncle Dave Lewis , All Music Guide

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Cellist David Finckel’s multifaceted career as concert performer, recording artist, educator, arts administrator, and cultural entrepreneur places him in the ranks of today’s most influential classical musicians.

He has been hailed as a “world class soloist” (Denver Post) and “one of the top ten, if not top five, cellists in the world today” (Nordwest Zeitung, Germany). In high demand as a chamber musician, David Finckel appears in over one hundred concerts each season in recital with pianist Wu Han and as cellist of the Grammy Award-winning Emerson String Quartet at the most prestigious venues and concert series across the United States and around the world. His activities as a concerto soloist include performances and recordings of the Dvorák Concerto, John Harbison Concerto, and Augusta Read Thomas’s Ritual Incantations.

In addition to his distinction as one of classical music’s most accomplished performers, David Finckel has established a reputation for his dynamic and innovative approach to the recording studio. In 1997, David Finckel and Wu Han launched ArtistLed, classical music’s first musician-directed and Internet-based recording company, whose catalog of eleven albums has won widespread critical acclaim. David Finckel’s recording for the ArtistLed label of the Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev sonatas received BBC Music Magazine’s coveted “Editor’s Choice” award. In the Fall of 2009, ArtistLed released its twelfth album, featuring contemporary works for cello and piano, composed for David Finckel and Wu Han, by Bruce Adolphe, Lera Auerbach, Pierre Jalbert, and George Tsontakis.

David Finckel and Wu Han have served as Artistic Directors of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2004. They are also the founders and Artistic Directors of Music@Menlo, a chamber music festival and institute in Silicon Valley that has garnered international acclaim since its inception in 2003.

David Finckel has achieved universal renown for his passionate commitment to nurturing the careers of countless young artists through a wide array of education initiatives. For many years, he taught alongside the late Isaac Stern at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center. This season, under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, David Finckel and Wu Han have established chamber music training workshops for young artists in Korea and Taiwan, intensive residency programs designed to bring student musicians into contact with an elite artist-faculty.