Glow Meta4 String Quartet

• 1 Play III, Op. 21 10:44
• 2 Valo, Op. 23 12:09
• 3 Play II, Op. 16 13:45
• 4 Loisto, Op. 12 05:06
• 5 Jurmo, Op. 31 11:25
• Total Runtime 53:09

Info for Glow

The conductor, composer and violinist Jaakko Kuusisto (b. 1974) enjoys an extensive career that was launched by a series of successes in international violin competitions in the 1990s. He is among the most frequently recorded of Finnish instrumentalists and has recorded concertos by some of the most pro - minent Finnish contemporary composers. Kuusisto’s compositions consist of more than 30 opuses: chamber and vocal music, orchestral pieces, operas, as well as music for films. He studied composing at the Sibelius Academy with Eero Hämeenniemi and at the Indiana University with David Dzubay. Kuusisto performs regularly as a conductor, soloist and chamber musician, and has held the position of artistic director at several festivals. Currently he is artistic director of the Oulu Music Festival. Kuusisto’s repertoire ranges from baroque to contemporary works, regardless of genre. He has worked with many leading orch - es tras, including the Minnesota Orchestra, Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orches tras, NDR Hannover, deFilharmonie in Belgium, the Tallinn and Lausanne Cham ber Orchestras, the Helsinki, Turku and Tampere Philharmonic Orchestras as well as the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra. Kuusisto enjoys a long-standing relation - ship with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra: he served as its leader for more than a decade and nowadays regularly conducts the orchestra of his home town. His record ings with the orchestra have been critically acclaimed, including the BIS record ing of his own Violin Concerto with Elina Vähälä as soloist.

Meta4 String Quartet:
Jaakko Kuusisto, violin
Riitta-Liisa Ristiluoma, viola
Jan-Erik Gustafsson, cello
Paavali Jumppanen, piano
Heini Kärkkäinen, piano

Meta4 String Quartet
formed in 2001, is one of the most internationally successful Finnish string quartets. In 2004 it won the first prize in the International Shostakovich Quartet Competition in Moscow, and was also awarded a special prize for best Shostakovich interpretation. The quartet enjoyed continued success in 2007, when it 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. Meta4 was selected as a BBC New Generation Artist for 2008-2010 and 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 the Artistic Director of Oulunsalo Music Festival between 2008 and 2011 and is a quartet-in-residence at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival since 2008.

Meta4 performs regularly in key music capitals and concert halls around the world and has lately visited for example Wiener Konzerthaus, Wigmore Hall and King’s Place in London, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, Cité de la Musique in Paris and Stockholms Konserthus. During the ongoing season the quartet will perform both in Finland as well as abroad, for instance in London, Bonn, Stuttgart, Israel and on an extensive tour in Australia.

The quartet has studied in the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA) under Hatto Beyerle and Johannes Meissl. They have released three recordings on Hänssler Classic: 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 by the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE as well as was awarded with the Emma prize (the Finnish Grammy) in the category of the Classical Album of the Year. Meta4 has also released an album of Kaija Saariaho’s chamber music works (Ondine, 2013) as well as Sibelius’s String Quartet ‘Voces Intimae’ on LP (Berliner Meister Schallplatten, 2013). The newest album of the quartet, String Quartets 1 & 5 by Béla Bartók (Hänssler Classic) was released in October 2014.

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.

This album contains no booklet.