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photo Marco BorggreveSince founding Bach Collegium Japan in 1990, Masaaki Suzuki has established himself as a leading authority on the works of Bach. He has remained their Music Director ever since, taking them regularly to major venues and festivals in Europe and the USA and building up an outstanding reputation for the expressive refinement and truth of his performances.
He is now regularly invited to work together with renowned European period ensembles, such as Collegium Vocale Gent and the Freiburger Barockorchester together with whom he visited several European capitals last season, and modern instrument orchestras in repertoire as diverse as Britten, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Stravinsky. Forthcoming engagements include the Boston Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Melbourne Symphony, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Zurich Tonhalle, and return visits to the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.
Suzuki’s impressive discography on the BIS label, featuring Bach’s complete works for harpsichord and his interpretations of Bach’s major choral works and sacred cantatas with Bach Collegium Japan (of which he has already completed over forty volumes of a project to record the complete series) have brought him many critical plaudits ? the Times has written: “it would take an iron bar not to be moved by his crispness, sobriety and spiritual vigour”.
Highlights of his current season with Bach Collegium Japan include 20th anniversary concerts in Tokyo and a tour of the USA, as well as a visit to the Hong Kong Arts Festival.
Masaaki Suzuki combines his conducting career with his work as organist and harpsichordist; this year he gives solo performances at Carnegie Hall New York and the Hong Kong Festival. Born in Kobe, he graduated from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music with a degree in composition and organ performance and went on to study harpsichord and organ at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam under Ton Koopman and Piet Kee. Founder and head of the early music department at the Tokyo University of the Arts, he is currently Visiting Professor of Choral Conducting at the Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music and the conductor of Yale Schola Cantorum.
In April 2001, Suzuki was decorated with ‘Das Verdienstkreuz am Bande des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik’ from Germany.
