Notable venues recently visited by Meta4 include the Wiener Konzerthaus, Wigmore Hall and King’s Place in London, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, the Konserthuset Stockholm and the Lincoln Center in New York.
The quartet’s latest album is Octets, a joint recording with the Gringolts Quartet released in March 2020 under the BIS label. This album including string octet compositions by Felix Mendelssohn and George Enescu has garnered rave reviews, both in Finland and worldwide.
Meta4 won the 2007 Joseph Haydn competition in Vienna, subsequently receiving a Finland Award in the same year from the Ministry of Education and Culture in recognition of its international success. Meta4 was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist from 2008 to 2010, and received a special commendation award from the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation in 2013.
Hunt
12.6.
Four of the concert’s enduring favourites tell stories of life and death. While Mozart’s quartet rings with uninhibited joy, Johannes Brahms’s trio, composed in memory of his mother, is an ethereal picture of beautiful memories. Jörg Widmann’s Jagdquartett, one of the most performed pieces of our time, takes us on a terrifying hunting trip from which there is only one way out.
Sound of Passion
14.6.
“These notes of mine kiss all of you. They call for you passionately,” wrote Leoš Janáček to his young beloved in the cover letter of his string quartet. Richard Wagner’s haunting Tristan and Isolde also deals with lust and longing for one’s beloved. American composer Amy Beach’s piano quintet, full of late Romantic passion, has become a favourite with audiences and critics alike in recent years.
In honorem maris
15.6.
Hardly any element of nature resounds in music as clearly as the sea: its waves, its peace, its endlessness – and its unstoppable power. The soft swells and treacherous undertows of the traditional In Honorem Maris concert is provided by the music of Debussy, Fagerlund and Ravel.
