The Solem Quartet are pleased to announce new programmes for their 2025-26 season.
Continuing their commitment to innovative programming, the Solem Quartet have crafted three unique programmes that will be available for engagement in 2025-2026. Praised for their “immaculate precision and spirit” by The Strad, the quartet has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most adventurous quartets of its generation. Highlights of their current season have included performances at the String Quartet Biennale in Amsterdam and the London Chamber Music Society, Sleeping at Last’s UK debut at the Southbank Centre with cellist/composer Philip Sheppard, and cutting-edge performances for Through the Noise in the north of England.
From earlier in the season, the Solem Quartet will offer ‘Towards Silence’, a programme that asks us to contemplate, or perhaps mourn Earth’s current condition, but that also reminds us of its natural aural beauty.
In this programme, 12th century polymath Hildegard von Bingen’s O quam mirabilis est is followed by music by contemporary composers John Metcalf, Cassandra Miller, Meredith Monk, Nick Martin and Max Richter.
Also available from the start of the season, ‘String Songs’ combines new music by leading British composers, while also celebrating American music past and present as the United States marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence.
‘String Songs’ places Dvorak’s String Quartet no.13 in G major, op.106 alongside music by William Grant Still, inviting presenters to choose a third work by either Meredith Monk or Ryan Latimer.
From later in the season, the quartet will offer ‘Europe and America’, celebrating the long association of European composers with America, from Dvorak and Korngold to Meredith Monk and Dani Howard, whose new work for the quartet will be heard in this programme.
The quartet’s ‘Steve Reich and Kate Bush’ project with vocalist Alice Zawadzki will continue to be part of their portfolio for 2025-2026. This programme contrasts Steve Reich’s ‘Different Trains’ with William Newell’s arrangements of iconic Kate Bush songs, and has been enthusiastically received by audiences and press alike. The Review Hub writes “from the opening Cloudbuster where the Solem Quartet seemed to be re-discovering their hidden baroque to Running Up That Hill with Zawadzki declamatory over sympathetic strings, the songs emerged fresh-minted.”
Full details of the Solem Quartet’s programme portfolio are available here.
