A collaborative concert between the LCMS and the distinguished Park Lane Group – founded more than 60 years ago to support and promote highly talented young artists at the beginning of their professional careers – presenting the award-winning Solem Quartet and the Estonian pianist Maksim Śtśura. An early string quartet by Haydn, the first of his ground-breaking Op. 20 set, is followed by Mendelssohn’s passionate and stormy quartet in F minor, and their programme is completed with Frank Bridge’s beautiful Piano Quintet from 1912.

Winners of the 2014 Royal Overseas League Ensemble Competition, the Solem String Quartet were brought together in 2011 by their studies at the University of Manchester, where they take their name from the University motto ‘arduus ad solem’ meaning ‘striving towards the sun’.

The Solem Quartet enjoy a busy concert schedule performing at venues across the UK including Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Holywell Music Room and the Edinburgh Festival as well as performing internationally in several European countries. In 2015 they were on the concert platform over 40 times.

The Quartet have benefited from inspirational teaching from a number of the world’s greatest chamber musicians including Gábor Takács-Nagy, Miguel da Silva, Peter Cropper, Thomas Riebl and Hatto Beyerle. They have attended the European Chamber Music Academy and the National Youth String Quartet Academy as well as courses with the Chilingirian, Dante and Maggini Quartets, and in January 2015 they undertook a two-week chamber music residency with Simon Rowland-Jones in Aldeburgh. The quartet were delighted to have been selected for the prestigious ChamberStudio Mentorship 2014/2015, which allowed them to study intensively with the internationally renowned cellist Christoph Richter here at Kings Place.