Meta4

Award-winning and world-renowned Meta4 bring their incredibly capable classical ensemble to the Espa Stage, along with their culturally and historically valuable violins and cellos.

Meta4, formed in 2001, is one of the most internationally successful Finnish string quartets. The quartet’s international career began in Moscow after winning the 2004 Dmitri Shostakovich contest as well as the special award for the best Shostakovich interpretation.

In 2007, Meta4 won the International Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna, and later that year, received the Finland Prize from the Ministry of Education and Culture in recognition of its international success. Meta4 was selected as a BBC New Generation Artist for 2008–2010 and in 2013 Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation awarded the quartet with a special prize in recognition of its work. Meta4 is Jyväskylä Sinfonia’s primary guest starting in autumn 2022.

Meta4 tours the world actively. Recently, the quartet has performed at Wiener Konzerthaus, Wigmore Hall and King’s Place in London, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, Cité de la Musique in Paris and Stockholms Konserthus, as well as Lincoln Center in New York. In Finland, the quartet served as the Artistic Director of Oulunsalo Music Festival in 2008–2011 and was the quartet-in-residence at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival from 2008-2017.

Meta4 has studied in the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA) under Hatto Beyerle and Johannes Meissl.
The quartet also releases recordings actively. Meta4 has released recordings on Hänssler Classics: Haydn’s String Quartets op. 55 1–3, which was awarded the esteemed Echo Klassik Award; Shostakovich’s String Quartets 3, 4 & 7, which received the 2012 Record of the Year award from the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE as well as the Emma prize (the Finnish Grammy), as well as Bartók’s String Quartets 1 & 5. The quartet has also released an album of Kaija Saariaho’s chamber music works via Ondine and an LP of Sibelius’s String Quartet ‘Voces Intimae’ (Berliner Meister Schallplatten).

An album with Brahms Clarinet Quintet and Gérard Pesson’s Nebenstück together with clarinettist Reto Bieri, was released via ECM Records in 2019. Two of the quartet’s most recent albums were released via Bis Records: their recording of octets by Mendelssohn and Enescu with the Gringolts Quartet was released in March 2020, and October 2021 saw the release of Oceano, Chamber Music by Sebastian Fagerlund. Their latest album, Tales from Norway, which includes compositions by Krishna Nagaraja, was released in spring 2022 via Challenge Classics and was nominated for the Emma award for Classical Album of the Year.

The members of Meta4 play distinguished instruments, which include a Stradivarius, kindly on loan from the Finnish Cultural Foundation, a Carlo Bergonzi violin, kindly on loan from Signe and Ane Gyllenberg's Foundation and a cello made by Lorenzo Storioni in Cremona in 1780.

Antti Tikkanen – violin
Minna Pensola – violin
Atte Kilpeläinen – viola
Tomas Djupsjöbacka – cello

The concert is part of the Meidän Uusimaa concert series supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Uusimaa Regional Fund.