Couple’s natural rapport leads to a classic performance

The classical record industry may be in a state of decline, but cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han avoided the fate of many of their label-less colleagues by planning ahead.

The catalog of their boutique label, ArtistLed -- presciently founded in 1997 -- has only eight releases, the latest a compendium of Brahms cello sonatas and piano pieces. But the performances on these CDs, which are sold only through their website (www.artistled.com) and at their concerts, are sharpened and polished to a perfectionist’s shine, and the sound is stunningly clear.

Indeed, this husband-and-wife duo’s recordings are so good that they set daunting standards for their live appearances. And Sunday afternoon at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium, one could pick out the occasional small technical flaw or problem caused by thick-set acoustical conditions that would have never made it onto one of their discs.

What you can’t get on CD, however, is the visual aspect of Finckel and Han: an evolved, natural body language that shows the couple anticipating each other’s every move and that has audible results, signaling a balanced, loving collaboration. Moreover, Finckel played every work on Sunday’s all-Russian program from memory -- even Lera Auerbach’s relatively new Cello Sonata No. 1, written for this duo in 2002.

Auerbach, only 32, comes from the Ural Mountains region and defected in 1991 just before the Soviet Union expired. Yet in hearing this tortured, angst-ridden four-movement work -- with its icy solos for Finckel in his highest register, manic perpetual-motion passages and impassioned laments -- you wonder whether she has truly left her old world behind. It’s a bold piece for Finckel and Han to tackle and for the Coleman Chamber Concerts audience to absorb.

Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata was written when the ailing composer was bent under Stalin’s oppression, yet it doesn’t have the beaten-down quality of many of his works from that late period. The rapport between Finckel and Han saw the performance through, though the finale’s balletic spirit seemed a bit heavy in articulation.

The expansive Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata may be notoriously slanted toward the piano, but Finckel and Han performed near-miracles of balance, with an especially rapt feeling in the lyrical third movement. They added Borodin’s Serenata -- better known to American audiences as the source of “Night of My Nights” from the musical “Kismet” -- as a winsome encore.