by Erik Entwistle
The Sanibel Music Festival capped its March 2024 series of chamber music concerts with a thrilling recital offered by returning favorites, cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. The husband-wife duo treated the audience at Fort Myers’ Peace Lutheran Church to a captivating program of nineteenth-century cello sonatas by Saint-Saëns, Mendelssohn and Grieg.
Wu Han opened the program with a brilliant mini lecture-recital on the evening’s musical selections, sharing fascinating details about the composers’ lives and different national backgrounds – Saint-Saëns being French, Mendelssohn German, and Grieg Norwegian. The audience also learned how the featured works came into being, and about the style and substance of the music itself.
After this wonderful and unexpected introduction, the performances that followed were stunning. The demanding piano parts (all three composers were virtuoso pianists) sparkled with invention and imagination in Wu Han’s supremely confident and capable hands.
David Finckel was also a joy to listen to and watch, with his varied facial expressions reacting spontaneously to unfolding musical moments, and often smiling during a particularly felicitous passage. The sound of the cello was warm and generous, and balanced perfectly with the piano.
The rapport between Finckel and Han was amazing to witness and reflected a lifetime of music making together. Both artists thoroughly enjoyed themselves, as did the audience, as numerous standing ovations attested.
It was a rare treat to hear these infrequently-heard, yet inspired cello sonatas performed at this level of consummate artistry. And as if three big, romantic masterworks weren’t enough, the duo concluded the memorable evening with an exquisite encore of Rachmaninoff’s cello sonata slow movement.
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