They are husband and wife, cellist and pianist, joint artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. They are co-founders of an Internet-based recording company, and of a chamber-music festival in Silicon Valley. They are, in short, a musical and cultural juggernaut.

And who are they? David Finckel, cello, and Wu Han, piano. On the side – or somewhere else – Mr. Finckel is cellist in the Emerson String Quartet, perhaps the most successful (commercially) chamber ensemble in the world, and one of its best.

They played a recital in Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday night, under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society. Quick question (raised a couple of days ago in these pages): If you play a cello recital, are you really playing chamber music? Does chamber music begin with three? You can pick your own definition, and, in the end – or even in the beginning – it hardly matters.

Mr. Finckel and Wu Han played three Russian sonatas: the Prokofiev, the Auerbach, and the Rachmaninoff.

The Auerbach?

Lera Auerbach was born in 1974, and defected from the Soviet Union on an American tour in 1991. She was thus one of the last defectors. Even as a teen, she was somewhat famous: as a pianist, composer, and poet. To say that this young lady was a wunderkind doesn’t quite cover it.

She wrote her sonata for Mr. Finckel and Wu Han in 2002. (I have grouped it with the other “Russian sonatas,” but she wrote it in America, where she has now lived about half her life.) Miss Auerbach has said that, in writing the sonata, she was inspired by reading Hermann Hesse’s novel “Demian.” But the sonata has no explicit program. It is restless, questing, interesting. Behind it is a remarkable spirit.

The second movement is a lament, but not your everyday lament: This one is unusually powerful and affecting. And the fourth and final movement is riveting – full of pain, desperation, a bit of puzzlement. I thought, as I was listening on Tuesday night, that this young woman must have experienced some of the tumult of life, to have written like this.

It will be interesting to follow her career, whose possibilities seem barely limited. For example, will the pianist-composer-poet write operas to her own librettos, a la Wagner? Maybe she already has.

Mr. Finckel and Wu Han handled “their” sonata well, with Mr. Finckel absolutely extraordinary in that lament: properly emotional, yet musically sensible.

I should say that, before they began their sonata, Wu Han came out to talk to the audience. At the sight of this, my heart sank. (The recital – beginning with the Prokofiev – had been going so well!) Why performers feel they must talk before a modern piece, holding the audience’s hand, I don’t know. Why audiences tolerate being condescended to in this way, I don’t know. Why modern composers aren’t insulted, I don’t know. (After Wu Han’s talk, Miss Auerbach applauded enthusiastically.)

What is music? Well, one thing it’s not is talking. It is not human speech. Wu Han said that the piece had “fantastic chords” – great. The point of them is to play them. She also read from the program notes – which everyone had in his hands.

But, as I said, no one ever seems affronted by this, and the kindergartenization of America continues apace. I should note, however, that Wu Han is a very good talker – personable and endearing. So …

Prokofiev wrote his cello sonata in 1949, and it was premiered by the young Mstislav Rostropovich and the still-fairly-young Sviatoslav Richter. How would you like to have been a fly on the wall on that occasion? (Al though you would have been in Stalin’s Russia.) Mr. Finckel tended to be warm and earthy in this work, sometimes sounding like a Russian bear. Some cellists are more gleaming, more icy, but Mr. Finckel was effective. Technically, he had no problem, executing the most challenging passages with ease.

Wu Han played somewhat percussively, as often befits Prokofiev, but not obnoxiously. She boasts a big, fat tone – this is not a spindly pianist. In the first movement, she could have played one of the composer’s C-major melodies more lyrically, but she was defensible.

The musicians gave this movement a fine shape, and evinced a keen sense of tempo. They were logical and severe where that was needed; they were tender, feeling, where that was called for.

The second movement is a scherzo, and Mr. Finckel and Wu Han were nicely clownish in it. (“Clownish” need not be a term of disparagement – not in Prokofiev!) In the final movement, they were sweet, simple, unpretentious. Sweetness in Prokofiev? But of course (see “Romeo and Juliet,” among other works).

Rather annoyingly, the cellist and the pianist did not release their concluding C together. I often complain that a piece isn’t over when the final note is merely struck – I wish more performers would acknowledge this.

On the second half of the program, we had the Rachmaninoff sonata, one of the most beautiful and engaging pieces this composer ever wrote. He wrote it after he had come out of a paralyzing depression, and it is full of gratitude for life. One of the melodies in the last movement is one of the most loving and lovable things we have in all of music.

For the most part, Mr. Finckel put on a clinic of Romantic cello playing. He was sonorous, dignified, moving. He dug into his strings for needed grittiness. You will understand what I mean when I say that Mr. Finckel was big enough for this piece: big enough in tone, big enough in conception, big enough in heart.

Wu Han did not do her best work in this sonata. Most unfortunately, she banged several of the melodies, when much more smoothness would have done.

And, from both musicians, this performance was marred by excessive rubato – license with tempo – playing hell with a natural flow. In both its appearances, that melody in the last movement was too slow, and a bit mannered. It was wrongly hesitant and halting.

But this had been a highly professional recital. Are David Finckel and Wu Han the best husband-and-wife cello-and-piano team since Jackie du Pre and Danny (as he was then widely known) Barenboim? Probably, but there is not much competition. In any case, they’re good, and you should catch them when you can.