Nahoko is a UK-based Japanese music journalist with a background in musicology. She writes regularly for various Japanese media including Ongaku no tomo and Mostly Classic magazines.
This portrait concert of the well-loved Czech horn player Radek Baborák, devised for Suntory Hall's Chamber Music Garden, was part solo recital, part ensemble concert.
In the second installment of their seven-year project at Suntory Hall's Chamber Music Garden, the Aoi Trio display a new level of confidence and bravura in Beethoven, Hosokawa and Franck.
Several notable house debuts, including the renowned director and choreographer Sabuto Teshigawara, enlivened the New National Theatre's first-ever production of Gluck's opera.
On Easter Monday, this year's London Handel Festival came to a close with Handel's youthful oratorio La Resurrezione in the suitably Baroque setting of London's St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Italian conductor Gaetano d’Espinosa is currently doing the rounds of Japanese orchestras, standing in for many of his colleagues who are unable to enter due to border closures.
The 23-year-old conductor from Brazil, the youngest of the four finalists, has a natural way with the baton and the ability to draw rich and brilliant sounds with effortless gestures.
Jun Aguni’s fast-paced new staging, with brightly coloured sets and costumes by Rome-based Alessandro Ciammarughi, was full of visual delights and fantasy-filled images.
For a year and a half since their European tour was cut short due to the outbreak of the pandemic, Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan have been grounded in Japan, performing domestically despite restrictions.
The Olympics is not the only big event that is taking place around Tokyo this summer. A large-scale festival of classical music, Festa Muza Summer, is currently being held at Muza Kawasaki Concert Hall.
One of the hidden sub-themes of Suntory Hall’s Chamber Music Garden 2021 has been the centenary of Saint-Saëns, with an opportunity to hear his two Piano Trios played by different groups.
Most people will associate Suntory Hall with the grand Main Hall, but tucked away at the side of the hall’s entrance is its small hall named Blue Rose which is the venue of its annual Chamber Music Garden festival.
Jean-Louis Grinda's traditional production is revived for New National Theatre Tokyo's eighth opera production since the house reopened with audiences last autumn.
Tokyo Opera City is well known for its acoustically magnificent Takemitsu Memorial Concert Hall, but tucked away in the basement is the lesser known Recital Hall where a series called "B→C" is held.
One of the few upsides to the current Covid-19 pandemic for the classical music world in Japan is that it has given opportunities to young home-grown talent.
After an eight-city recital tour of Japan with duo partner Daishin Kashimoto, Kirill Gerstein gave a recital of his own at Kioi Hall, arguably Tokyo's best acoustics for solo piano.
Seven months ago, when Tokyo’s musical scene was brought to a standstill by the Covid-19 pandemic, it was hard to envisage any orchestra performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by December, an important year-end custom in Japan.
"Is the Vienna Philharmonic coming or not?" This had been the talk of town amongst classical music fans in Japan since September, when its concert scene regained some semblance of normality.
