Theatre of Voices & Meta4
W.A.Mozart/Atte Kilpeläinen: Requiem
Meta4*
Minna Pensola violin
Antti Tikkanen violin
Atte Kilpeläinen viola
Tomas Djupsjöbacka violoncello
Theatre of Voices
Else Torp soprano
Anna Caroline Olesen alto
Paul Bentley-Angell tenor
Jakob Bloch Jespersen bass
*In collaboration with Karsten Witt Musik Management
Theatre of Voices
Theatre of Voices was founded in London in 1990 by early music icon Paul Hillier and is counted among the world’s finest vocal ensembles. The group’s first concerts in Berlin and London featured new works by Arvo Pärt as well as by John Cage. After twelve flourishing years in USA performing right across North America and making various European tours, Hillier moved back to Europe in 2003 and the group has been based in Copenhagen. In 2010—the group’s 20th anniversary year—Theatre of Voices received a Grammy Award for David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion.
Its main focus nowadays is on new music, though very often interwoven with various kinds of early music, reflecting Hillier’s lifelong devotion to these two ends of the musical spectrum. Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices have enjoyed close collaborations with numerous composers: Arvo Pärt, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Cage, Ingram Marshall, John Adams, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Heiner Goebbels, Kaija Saariaho, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Helena Tulve, Sunleif Rasmussen, Jóhann Jóhannsson and many more.
In 2025 Theatre of Voices premiered Julia Wolfe’s Italian Lesson at Carnegie Hall New York.
An intense artistic partnership ties the group with Concerto Copenhagen, Kronos Quartett, Meta4 String Quartet, London Sinfonietta, Michala Petri, Fretwork, Phantasm, Peter Langars, Pablo Ortiz among others.
The ensemble performs at prominent international festivals and major venues such as Edinburgh, Berlin Musikfest, Potsdam, Hong Kong, Bergen, Prague Dvorak, Nargen, Ravenna, Schwäbisch Gmünd, RheinVokal and New Vision Festival Hong Kong as well as Carnegie Hall New York, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Barbican and King’s Place London, Royal Opera Kopenhagen, Flagey Brussels, Brucknerhaus Linz and enjoys also special projects e.g. with art of installation. Theatre of Voices sung Saariaho’s opera Only the Sound Remains in Paris, Madrid and New York. The ensemble were also soloists with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Orquestra Sinfonica do Porto Casa da Música, BBC Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and London Sinfonietta. Since 2021 Theatre of Voices promotes its own festival of several days in Copenhagen and Holbaek, Denmark.
The discography of Theatre of Voices includes numerous albums for harmonia mundi, including the highly praised recording Creator Spiritus with chamber music works by Arvo Pärt, The Christmas Story based on the traditional Christmas service Nine Lessons and Carols, Stockhausen’s Stimmung, works by Luciano Berio and other contemporary composers (Stories) and Cries of London (English renaissance music) and David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion.
Dacapo Records has released Buxtehude’s Scandinavian Cantatas as well as works by Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen based on Song in Dowland's Lacrimae.
Deutsche Grammophon featured five albuma with works by Oscar-nominated Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, lately Drone Mass together with the ACME Ensemble.
Theatre of Voices has also moved into the film world. Tracks from more than thirty CD recordings are used on movie soundtracks such as La Grande Bellezza and Arrival, and the ensemble has worked on film projects with Danish documentarist Phie Amboe and Jóhann Jóhannsson.
Theatre of Voices is sponsored by the Danish Arts Foundation and Augustinus Foundation.
Season 2025/26
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META 4
Their flamboyant style of music-making – standing, swaying, sometimes even stamping – has thrilled me in the past. Now they seem to deploy even more breathtaking levels of technical and interpretive finesse. The Times, Richard Morrison, 11 April 2023
Meta4, formed in Finland in 2001, is one of the most internationally successful string quartets. The four musicians, who also share a close personal friendship, are united in their musical openness, curiosity, and versatility. Musically, they are characterised by their “breath-taking vitality” (Badische Zeitung) and ”transparent, richly coloured sound” (Rondo), as well as a ”breath of fresh air” and for their “sense of humour" (Süddeutsche Zeitung).
Meta4 performs regularly in key music capitals and concert halls around the world including the Wiener Konzerthaus, Wigmore Hall and Kings Place in London, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, Cité de la Musique in Paris and Stockholms Konserthus, and has also toured Australia. The ensemble was principal guest conductor of the Jyväskylä Symphony Orchestra from 2022 to 2024, and thrilled audience and critics alike with its performances in Kaija Saariaho’s chamber opera Only the Sound Remains at the Finnish National Opera, the Opéra de Paris, the Teatro Real Madrid, and Lincoln Center in New York.
In 2004, Meta4 won the first prize in the International Shostakovich Quartet Competition in Moscow, where they were also awarded a special prize for the best Shostakovich interpretation. In 2007, the Quartet won the first prize in the International Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna. Later that year the Finnish Minister of Culture awarded Meta4 with the annual Finland Prize in recognition of an international breakthrough. They were selected as a BBC New Generation Artist for 2008‐2010 and took part in the 20th anniversary celebration concert at Wigmore Hall, collaborating for the first time with Khatia Bunitiashvili. In 2013, the Fund of Jenny and Antti Wihuri awarded the quartet with a special prize in recognition of its work. Meta4 also served as artistic director of the Oulunsalo Music Festival between 2008 and 2011, and as quartet in residence at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival from 2008 to 2017.
Meta4 studied at the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA) under Hatto Beyerle and Johannes Meissl. They have released three recordings on Hänssler Classic to date: Haydn’s String Quartets op. 55 1–3 (2009), which was awarded with the esteemed Echo Klassik Award 2010, and Shostakovich’s String Quartets 3, 4 & 7 (2012), which received the Record of the Year 2012 award from the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE and the Emma prize (the Finnish Grammy) for Classical Album of the Year, as well as Béla Bartók’s String Quartets 1 & 5. Meta4 has also released two albums of Kaija Saariaho’s chamber music works (Ondine, 2013) and Sibelius’s String Quartet Voces Intimae on LP (Berliner Meister Schallplatten, 2013). An album with Brahms Clarinet Quintet and Gérard Pesson’s Nebenstück together with Reto Bieri, was released on ECM Records in 2019. The most recent albums of the Quartet were released on BIS Records: their recording of octets by Mendelssohn and Enescu with the Gringolts Quartet was released in 2020, and fall 2021 saw the release of Oceano, Chamber Music by Sebastian Fagerlund.
The members of the quartet have at their disposal a Stradivarius violin owned by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, a violin built by Elina Kaljunen in Helsinki in 2025, an Italian viola from the 18th century, and a cello built by Lorenzo Storioni in 1780.
2025/26 season
Meta 4 represented by Karsten Witten
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