Meta4 Quartet

Well known in music centers like the Vienna Konzerthaus and Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Música, Finland’s META4 Quartet appeared at the Library on a rare U.S. tour. The group is noted for a striking range of color and articulation and “breathtaking levels of technical and interpretive finesse” (The Times, U.K.). META4 brought its distinctive, sometimes flamboyant performing style to works by two composers for whom they have made benchmark recordings, Kaija Saariaho and Dmitri Shostakovich. Saariaho’s poetic “Terra Memoria” (“Earth Memory”) is dedicated “for those departed.” “Certain memories keep on haunting us in our dreams,” she writes. “Even after many years, some of these memories change some remain clear flashes which we can relive.” A work by another Finnish master is the concert’s centerpiece: Jean Sibelius’s String Quartet “Intimate Voices,” op. 56. An excerpt from this program is available online for a limited time.

Program: Jean Sibelius: String Quartet in D minor, Voces intimae, op. 56

Musicians: Antti Tikkanen, violin
Minna Pensola, violin
Atte Kilpeläinen, viola
Tomas Djupsjöbacka, cello.

For more information, visit https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-11364