David Finckel: The 21st Century Renaissance Man
Cellist, educator, festival programmer, and entrepreneur is a man with a plan
Cellist David Finckel, pianist and wife Wu Han, and their daughter Lilian Finckel on stage at Alice Tully Hall in New York City.
Photo: Tristan Cook
Long a fixture on the international chamber-music scene, Finckel’s presence and influence seem only to grow. He and his wife, pianist Wu Han, have been co-artistic directors of Music@Menlo, which acts as both a concert series and training ground for young chamber players, since its founding in 2003. The couple also heads a boutique record label, ArtistLed, and serve as co-artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a position they have held since 2004. In that time, Finckel and Wu Han have vastly expanded the activities of the organization and recently signed on to hold the job for another five years.
“David is at the very top of the chamber-music world,” says cellist Fred Sherry, a member and former artistic director of the Chamber Music Society. As a musician, performer, and administrator, “David works with astounding ease. He’s one who is embraced by the many corners of the music world.”
Just five hours before the Music@Menlo Winter Series concert, Finckel, fresh off the plane from San Diego, where the Emersons had played the previous evening, appears in a suburban San Francisco hotel lobby for an interview. The 59-year-old cellist’s low-key dress of dark slacks and black zip-up fleece emblazoned with the Music@Menlo logo belies the excitement and anticipation he was apparently feeling. “Today is a landmark day,” he beams. “I can’t wait to see the faces today.
“There’s a lot of excitement.”
Further Resources
Read the complete Music@Menlo program.
The summer programs remain the core of Music@Menlo, which occurs over three weeks at Menlo School in Atherton, California, and presents a slew of concerts and educational programs. This year, the festival runs July 22 through August 13. Last summer, for instance, the festival presented old standbys such as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, but also music by more recent works by Crumb, Schoenberg, and Britten. And a lecture series offered up talks on such topics as “Under the Influence: Cultural Collage in Paris during the Early 20th Century.”
Music@Menlo also runs training programs for college-age students and younger teens. The festival “is a total immersion,” Finckel says. “Many people give up their lives and spend all day on the Menlo campus at master classes and discussions and going to coachings and concerts.”
The festival had long toyed with the idea of winter concerts, but didn’t proceed until Finckel felt the festival had both the financial support and mental bandwidth for the undertaking. “They should be concerts with the same integrity and values and priorities as the summer,” he says. Following the opening concert with the Emersons, the winter series presented a January concert of music for two pianos performed by Wu Han, Alessio Bax, and Anne-Marie McDermott, and a final May concert of piano quartets.
“There’s the idea of keeping the festival community engaged,” Finckel says. “The winter concerts don’t compete with the summer, but they provide concerts of the same quality.”
As hands-on artistic directors, Finckel and Wu Han are “super-careful and conscious of all the different values of this festival, from the performances to the programming and contextual clarity to audience care and artist care,” he says. “We have our hands in every aspect of the production.”
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