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REVIEW: Wu Han & David Finckel
Published: 1/5/2009 12:46 PM
Last Modified: 1/5/2009 12:46 PM

Pianist Wu Han promised "fireworks" as a finale for the concert she and her husband, cellist David Finckel, performed Sunday at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

But in truth, the entire afternoon – the first concert of the new year presented by Chamber Music Tulsa – was a spectacular display of musicianship by two of this country's premier artists.

This was the first time Finckel and Han have performed together in Tulsa, although they have appeared here in the past. Han is regular guest of the OK Mozart International Festival in Bartlesville, and Finckel performed with the Emerson String Quartet when that ensemble was presented by Chamber Music Tulsa two seasons ago.

The idea for the concert they presented Sunday was a brief history of the cello sonata, from the Baroque to the Romantic. But there was nothing didactic about the way the four pieces – one each by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Mendelssohn – were performed. This was music-making at its its most intelligent, its most expressive, its most natural, its most conversational, its most emotional.

To cite one example: consider the opening movement of the Sonata for Viola de Gamba in G Major, by J. S. Bach. This was one of the works Bach composed for a local coffeehouse, which gave him the chance to write music that was free from the strictures of the church music that was his primary job. Right in the middle of the first movement is a wonderfully melancholy melody – a sad little song without words for the cello. Finckel's playing of this tune was simply extraordinary; the clear, vocal tone he produced only emphasized how close to the human voice – in range, in tone, in expressiveness – the cello can be.

The interplay between Han and Finckel was also something marvelous to watch. It wasn't so much that the couple played "together" so much as they played as one. The first movement of the Beethoven Sonata No. 4 in C Major, for example, was marked by a series of phrases for the cello that the piano is to finish, and between Finckel and Han, these lines came across as perfectly formed and punctuated sentences.

There was a bright, fizzy energy to every note they played, as they maneuvered through the sudden, sharp changes in tone, dynamics and attack that marked the Beethoven, the jaunty, happy tunes of the second movement of the Brahms Cello Sonata No. 1, and the wide-ranging pyrotechnics of Mendelssohn's Cello Sonata No. 2 in D Major.

The Mendelssohn was where the fireworks were promised – not surprising, as this piece is a series of technical displays. The first movement is built around a joyful melody that takes on a kind of carnival ride quality as it continually reappears on the way to a raucously jubilant finale. The second movement is full of staccato playfulness, balanced by the soulful, hymn-like melodies of the third.

The final movement was an all-out showcase of speed and finesse, and while Han and Finckel performed this section with dizzying speed, it was not merely a rapid flow of notes – the joy and humor inherent in the music was never obscured by the speed.

The near-capacity crowd gave the couple two standing ovations, and the couple returned for an encore – a roaring, heartstopping rendition of the second movement of Shostakovich's Cello Sonata in D Minor.



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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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