On Tuesday, February 18, 2025, the Han Finckel Setzer Trio played their 11th concert in 14 years for Friends. Clearly, they have become our favourite visiting piano trio since 2011. The musicians in the Trio have been friends for many years, and they are long-time friends of ours, too. Pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel are life partners, recital partners, and co-artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, NYC, and of Music@Menlo, Menlo Park, CA. As a duo, they played a concert for us in 2000. Wu Han has also played for Friends with a range of groups from the Chamber Music Society over the years. Philip Setzer was one of the founding violinists of the Emerson String Quartet, playing with David Finckel in the Quartet for 34 years. The Emerson String Quartet first played for Friends in Vancouver in 1979, and by the time they disbanded in 2023, they had played 34 concerts here for us.
Over the many years that they have played for us in Vancouver, all three members of the Trio became good friends with our late board president, Eric Wilson. With their concert sponsored as a memorial to Eric, the musicians spoke briefly to the audience about their friendship with him, and their understanding and appreciation of his significance to the chamber music scene both locally and internationally. Wu Han commented that the evening’s programme of music was one they felt that Eric would have enjoyed.
They started with Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 18 in A Major. This is a Classical work, with the symmetry and elegance that we associate with the period. But being music by Haydn, there are also touches of humour and even rustic, slightly rough sounds and rhythmic shifts that are wholly intentional on the part of the composer. A couple of spots in the music had me suppressing a giggle. The music making of these masterful musicians gave us a chance to listen in on this as a series of tunes and phrases shared amongst the three instruments with casual ease matched by tonal clarity, balance amongst the voices, and a warm sense of form.
As the musicians commented in their remarks, where Haydn is Classical and brief, by contrast Beethoven’s three Opus 1 trios, while still relatively Classical in form, are not so brief. And, as is expected with Beethoven, the music is also more serious than that written by Haydn. They played his Piano Trio in G Major, Opus 1 No. 2 with ebullient flair and feeling, as well as impeccable structure and balanced instrumental voices. This interpretation showed the brilliance of the composer’s musical design in this early work that helped open the doors for his Viennese career. Apparently, Joseph Haydn was sufficiently impressed with these trios to urge Beethoven to publish them immediately, and with the moniker, “by Beethoven, student of Haydn”. Hahaha! Glad to realise that both composers had healthy egos. But on this night, the musicians were not adding their own egos to the musical mix but rather only serving the phrasing and development of the emerging musical genius of the composer, Beethoven.
After the interval, the Trio returned, and introduced a work that they knew was one of the late Eric Wilson’s favourite trios, Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Trio in E Minor, Opus 90 “Dumky”. As soon as the piano and cello launched into the opening phrases of this music, everybody in the audience sat up and took notice. Transformed in sound from the Classical first half of the programme, the musicians’ playing was rich and Romantic, but in no way sentimental. The music was dynamic, alternating from slower lament to more rapid fierceness and even a release of joy throughout the six dumkas in the work. When the last notes faded away, the audience erupted with cheers and were on their feet.
And after three curtain calls, violinist Philip Setzer told the audience that Eric would not allow them to play an encore in past appearances because he worried that after the encore the restaurant kitchen for the post-concert dinner would have closed by the time they got there. The response was warm laughter. This time, Philip said, in Eric’s memory they would play the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Opus 49. As the delightful melodies and ornaments drifted through the Vancouver Playhouse, we all reflected on what we have to be thankful for in the legacy left to us by Eric Wilson and his 63 years on the board of Friends of Chamber Music. Everybody left with a smile and anticipation for more upcoming great live performances of fabulous chamber music.
Our next concert expands from a piano trio (violin, cello, piano) to a piano quartet (violin, viola, cello, piano) when we welcome the Notos Quartet from Germany to the Vancouver Playhouse on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at 3 pm. Join Friends to hear more exquisite chamber music featuring piano in ensembles.
