L-R: Danielle de Niese; Diotima Quartet; Johannes Moser and Xuefei Yang; Rachel Podger; Chiaroscuro Quartet
Kings Place today [11 May 2023] announce the line-up for the 2023/24 Master Series, featuring some of the world’s finest soloists and ensembles. This annual series at Kings Place gives artists an opportunity to explore the music they love best in the radiant acoustic of Hall One, allowing audiences a unique insight into the programmes the musicians curate.
Acclaimed baroque violinist Rachel Podger – recently announced as Kings Place’s Artist in Focus for the 23/24 season – opens the Master Series in September 2023 with her BBC Music Magazine Award-winning project Tutta Sola. Alongside featuring an exciting new arrangement of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue BWV 565 for solo violin by Chad Kelly, her recital will also feature music from Johann Joseph Vilsmayr and Johann Paul von Westhoff before culminating in Bach’s dazzling Partita No. 3 in E major [21 September].
The Diotima Quartet returns to Kings Place in October to perform modern masterpieces for string quartet by Janácek and Ligeti. One of the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world, the quartet has worked in close collaboration with the greatest composers of our age and brought the UK premiere of Thomas Adés’s Clarinet Quintet Alchymia to Kings Place in 2021. Their recent recording of Ligeti’s string quartets has been met with universal acclaim, receiving the Chamber Choice in the April issue of BBC Music Magazine and 5* from The Guardian, who stated “Quatuor Diotima meet their challenges with more accuracy and brilliance than any I’ve heard before” [11 October].
Star soprano Danielle de Niese presents an American songbook-inspired programme, featuring classics such as I Got Rhythm from George Gershwin, Cole Porter’s I Get a Kick Out of You and Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer’s You’re Just Too Marvellous for Words. Joined by pianist and frequent collaborator Matthew Fletcher, the programme is also interspersed with arias from operas by Mozart, Handel, Bizet, Dvořák and Gounod, displaying the versatility of de Niese’s voice [9 November].
Internationally-renowned guitarist Xuefei Yang collaborates with cellist Johannes Moser for a varied programme celebrating music from across the centuries, with pieces by Dowland, Bach and S L Weiss to Yang’s own arrangement of Changjun Xu’s Swords Dance. The programme also featuresPulitzer Prize winner Ellen Reid’s Somewhere There is Somewhere Else, which recently featured on Moser’s ground-breaking album Alone Together. Yang and Moser have previously collaborated on the “elegant, ravishing album” [ArtMuse London] Magna Carta, featuring the complete works for guitar by John Brunning [1 March 2024].
The Chiaroscuro Quartet returns to Kings Place to close Master Series, performing Beethoven’s Razumovsky quartets along with Haydn’s String Quartet in D Minor Op.9. Known for their authentic performances of classical chamber repertoire and their use of gut strings and period bows, the Quartet are acclaimed the world over and were described by The Observer as a “shock to the ears of the best kind” [5 June 2024].
Helen Wallace, Artistic and Executive Director of Kings Place, said: “Master Series provides us with a wonderful opportunity to invite internationally-acclaimed solo artists to perform in the luminous embrace of Hall One. This season we have exciting debuts from Danielle de Niese, Johannes Moser and Xuefei Yang, and welcome returns from our artist in focus Rachel Podger, and the very special Chiaroscuro Quartet. And who better than the Diotima Quartet to mark Ligeti’s important centenary?”
Further information and tickets for the 2023/24 Master Series can be found on the Kings Place website.