Friends of Chamber Music fan-favourite Han Finckel Setzer Trio returns to the Vancouver stage, February 18

The distinguished musicians will perform Haydn’s Piano Trio in A major, Beethoven’s Piano Trio in G major, and Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor

By Gail Johnson

Han Finckel Setzer Trio.

Friends of Chamber Music presents the Han Finckel Setzer Trio on February 18 at the Vancouver Playhouse

CELLIST DAVID FINCKEL and violinist Philip Setzer were members of the legendary Emerson String Quartet for more than 30 years. Over the past two decades, they have teamed up with pianist Wu Han (Finckel’s life partner) to form the Han Finckel Setzer Trio, earning global praise along the way.

The group has recorded the piano trios of Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Dvořák on the ArtistLed label (which Han and Finckel launched). With performances described by the Washington Post as “startlingly intimate”, the trio has also become a fan favourite of Vancouver’s Friends of Chamber Music. The organization presents a concert by the Han Finckel Setzer Trio on February 18 at the Vancouver Playhouse.

Steeped in American and Russian musical traditions, the musicians will perform Haydn’s Piano Trio in A major, HOB XV:18; Beethoven’s Piano Trio in G major, Op. 1, No. 2; and Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90, “Dumky”.

Han and Finckel are past co-recipients of Musical America’s Musician of the Year Award. They are co-artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City and of California’s Music@Menlo.

Currently a distinguished professor of violin and chamber music at Stony Brook University in New York, Setzer also is on faculty and is the artistic director of Strings Chamber Music at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 2024, he was appointed artistic director of the Manchester Music Festival in Vermont. He is the director of the Shouse Institute, the teaching division of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit.

Han serves as artistic advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music at the Barns series and for Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts and is artistic director of La Musica in Sarasota, Florida.

Finckel, meanwhile, is a professor at The Juilliard School and Stony Brook University. 

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