David Finckel, cello and Wu Han, piano

The cello-piano duo of David Finckel and Wu Han (recipients of Musical America’s Musicians of the Year Award and Artistic Directors of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center) return to Duke Arts with a journey through the great chamber works of Beethoven. They begin with the great composer’s pioneering first two cello sonatas, both of which present an elegantly expressive partnership between cello and piano. This is one of the first examples of the two instruments being placed on equal footing in chamber music, rather than the cello being limited to a continuo part. A few years after the success of these sonatas, Beethoven then wrote three sets of variations, all based on operatic tunes. We are treated to the first of those here in this recital: 12 Variations on ‘See, the conqu’ring hero comes,’ probably the best-known chorus from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus. Beethoven’s Op. 69 Sonata is considered by many to be the greatest cello sonata ever written, composed at the height of his ‘heroic period’ about a decade later in 1807.