Finckel, Han and Setzer give Sunset Center in Carmel world-class classical.

Three of America’s most acclaimed chamber musicians come together this weekend for the first of a two-concert project focused on offering public performances of all six of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano trios. Three of the six are performed this weekend, the others via a return visit in April of 2017.

Cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han enjoy a string of credits spanning the great concert halls of the world, and blazing press clips to go with it. The Wall Street Journal called them “America’s power couple of chamber music.” The duo also directs of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, in addition to pioneering major innovations in the way classical musical music is recorded; Time’s Terry Teachout hails their recording of a Tchaikovsky disc as “a performance that ranks among the great chamber music recordings of the postwar era.”

In addition, contributing violinist Philip Setzer is a founding member of the long-running Emerson String Quartet, one of the most decorated string quartets in America, with nine Grammys and a coveted Avery Fisher award. Finckel was the quartet’s cellist for 34 years.

As a composer, Beethoven was incredibly prolific, yet he wrote just six piano trios. The two early period works which will begin this program aren’t in the same league as his middle and late period masterworks (the Ghost trio, which will close the concert and the Archduke trio, which will be on this group’s next program here in 2017). But these first two nonetheless display a budding confidence in the young composer’s own prowess and his insistence on pushing the envelope of the creative boundaries he inherited in the late 19th century from the likes of Haydn and Mozart. As is often the case with a composer’s most early works, there are some largely neglected master moments here, particularly in the finale of the first piece, which is wonderful in its ebullient vitality and boisterous energy.

The masterpiece crown jewel for this weekend’s outing is clearly the aforementioned Ghost trio, so nicknamed for the mournful piano and beyond eerie melodic forms of its second movement – many a composition and melody have been called “haunting,” this one is one of the few that sounds positively so.

A post-concert dinner with the artists serves as an accompanying fundraiser (at Il Fornaio on Ocean). Seating is limited.

FINCKEL, HAN and SETZER 3pm Sunday, May 15. $45-$60; grades K-12 free. 625-9938. www.carmelmusic.org. After 12 noon Friday, May 13 Sunset Center Box Office. Sunset Center, San Carlos and Ninth, Carmel. 620-2048.