Artistic Directors
Wu Han, Artistic Director
Pianist Wu Han, recipient of Musical America’s Musician of the Year Award, the highest honor bestowed by the organization, enjoys a multi-faceted musical life that encompasses performing, recording and artistic direction at the highest levels. Currently artistic co-director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Music@Menlo, Silicon Valley’s innovative chamber music festival, she also serves as artistic advisor for Wolf Trap’s Chamber Music in the Barns series and for Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts. She was appointed Artistic Director of La Musica in 2022.
Her recent concert activities have taken her from New York’s Lincoln Center stages to the most important concert halls in the United States, Europe and Asia. In addition to countless performances of virtually the entire chamber repertoire, her recent concerto performances include appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony and the Aspen Festival Orchestra.
She is the founder and artistic director of ArtistLed, classical music’s first artist-directed, internet-based recording label (1997) which has released her performances of the staples of the cello-piano duo repertoire with cellist David Finckel. Her more than 80 releases on ArtistLed, CMS Live and Music@Menlo Live include masterworks of the chamber repertoire with numerous distinguished musicians, the latest being Schubert’s Winterreise with baritone Nikolay Borchev.
During the past season, Wu Han designed and produced more than 200 digital media projects, including concerts and innovative educational programs, which have sustained the art of chamber music in dozens of communities across the United States. At CMS, Wu Han was instrumental in transforming the CMS Two Program into today’s Bowers Program, which admits, through rigorous and highly competitive auditions, stellar young musicians to the CMS roster for a term of three seasons.
Passionately dedicated to education for musicians of all ages and experience, Wu Han directs the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, which immerses some forty young musicians every summer in the multi-faceted fabric of the festival. Wu Han was privileged to serve on multiple occasions as a faculty member of Isaac Stern’s Chamber Music Encounters in Israel, New York and Japan.
A recipient of the prestigious Andrew Wolf Award, Wu Han was mentored by an elite selection of some of the greatest pianists of our time, including Lilian Kallir, Rudolf Serkin, and Menahem Pressler.
Married to cellist David Finckel since 1985, Wu Han divides her time between concert touring and residences in New York City and Westchester County.
Bruno Giuranna, Artistic Director Emeritus
Bruno Giuranna, the distinguished Italian violist and conductor, was born in Milan into a family of musicians and completed his musical studies in Rome. He was a founding member of the celebrated I Musici and performed extensively in the legendary Trio Italiano d’Archi. He began his solo career under the baton of Herbert von Karajan in its world premiere of Giorgio Federico Ghedini’s Musica da Concerto per Viola e Orchestra, a work composed especially for Giuranna. Since that time, he has played with the world’s leading orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and La Scala Orchestra in Milan under such illustrious conductors as Claudio Abbado, Sir John Barbirolli, Sergiu Celibidache, Carlo Maria Giulini and Riccardo Muti.
His extensive list of recordings for Phillips, Deutsche Grammophon and EMI include editions of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Franco Gulli, Henryk Szeryng and Anne-Sophie Mutter, the complete set of concertos for viola d’amore by Vivaldi and Mozart’s piano quartets with the Beaux Arts Trio. In 1990, the recording of Beethoven’s String Trios with Anne-Sophie Mutter, Bruno Giuranna and Mstislav Rostropovich won a Grammy nomination. As conductor, Giuranna has won the Grand Prix du Disque de l’Academie Charles Cros in Paris for the recording of Boccherini’s cello concertos with David Geringas as soloist. His latest recording of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante was performed with Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.
Giuranna held the post of chair of viola at the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin until 1998 and has taught at the Musik-Academie in Detmold, the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, the Royal College and Royal Academy in London, and has given master classes worldwide. Frequently invited to the Marlboro Festival in the USA, he currently teaches at the Fondazione Stauffer in Cremona and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. From 1983 to 1992 he was the artistic director of the Orchestra da Camera di Padova e il Veneto and in 1998 he presided over the First International Bruno Giuranna Viola Competition in Brazil.
Profoundly convinced of the importance of “playing together” as a unique and irreplaceable practice in the development of the musical personality, he has dedicated himself to the creation of chamber music projects where he plays alongside young musicians. In 1987, he was decorated by the Italian president with the title of Cavaliere di Gran Croce al Merito. He also received the D. Litt., honoris causa, from the University of Limerick in 2002. In 2011, after having presided over the Italian branch of ESTA (European String Teachers Association), he was elected European president.
His viola parts and his transcription for string trio of the Bach Goldberg Variations are freely downloadable at www.giuranna.it.