Masaaki Suzuki conducts the NZSO in Legends: Mozart & Beethoven

Since founding Bach Collegium Japan in 1990, Masaaki Suzuki has established himself as a leading authority on the works of J. S. Bach. He has remained their Music Director ever since, taking them regularly to major venues and festivals in Europe and the USA, recording the complete cycle of Bach’s Sacred Cantatas and building up an outstanding reputation for the expressive refinement and truth of his performances.

 In addition to working with renowned period ensembles, such as Collegium Vocale Gent and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Suzuki is invited to conduct repertoires as diverse as Brahms, Britten, Fauré, Mahler, Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, with orchestras such as New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Bavarian Radio, Danish National Radio, Gothenburg Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. This 2023/24 season includes his debut with Los Angeles Philharmonic, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo  and returns to Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Spanish National Orchestra and Handel and Haydn Orchestra among others. He will also have an extense European tour with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

 Suzuki’s impressive discography on the BIS label, featuring all Bach’s major choral works as well as complete works for harpsichord, has 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”. 2018 marked the triumphant conclusion of Bach Collegium Japan’s epic recording of the complete sacred and secular cantatas initiated in 1995 and comprising sixty-five volumes. The ensemble has recently recorded the Grammophone’s awarded Bach’s St. John’s Passion and St. Matthew’s Passion.

 In the previous season, he has been invited with Bach Collegium Japan to participate, as one of three ensembles, in the cantata cycle at Bachfest Leipzig, where they also gave a critically acclaimed performance of Mendelssohn’s Elias; their busy touring schedule also took them to the USA performing at venues including the Alice Tully Hall, New York and San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall and his European tour with concerts in Wroclaw, Cologne, Vienna, Dusseldorf, Lausanne, Paris, Antwerp, Madrid and The Hague.

 Suzuki combines his conducting career with his work as an organist and harpsichordist; he recently recorded Bach’s solo works for these instruments. 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 at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam under Ton Koopman and Piet Kee. Founder and Professor Emeritus of the early music department at the Tokyo University of the Arts, he was on the choral conducting faculty at the Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music from 2009 until 2013, where he remains affiliated as the principal guest conductor of Yale Schola Cantorum. 

 In 2012 Suzuki was awarded with the Leipzig Bach Medal and in 2013 the Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize. In April 2001, he was decorated with ‘Das Verdienstkreuz am Bande des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik’ from Germany.