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.
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.
Every August, the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra gives a concert to commemorate and reflect on the tragedy of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima on 6th August 1945.
Japan didn’t experience a strict “lockdown”, but concert halls and orchestras were asked to “refrain from” holding events. We look at how lockdown has progressed and the role that video has played.
We spoke to multi-genre composer and producer Keiichiro Shibuya about his new opera, due to premiere at the New National Theatre Tokyo in August, that will see a robot in a starring role.
We spoke to Japanese composer Dai Fujikura about his new opera, based on a short story by H.G. Wells, and the concerto he wrote inspired by the piano of a young girl who perished in Hiroshima.
New National Theatre Tokyo's new staging of Donizetti's jolly Don Pasquale, in Stefano Vizioli's classic production, featured some sparkling vocal performances from a fine cast.
For any opera house, the production of a new Wagner Ring cycle is a huge undertaking and becomes a mission statement. For Finnish National Opera, its mission is to stage an all-Finnish Ring.
During Henry Wood’s Prom years, Wednesday was Bach Night. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth, the Proms revived this tradition in the final week with a couple of modern twists.
Polish-born composers Grażyna Bacewicz and Mieczysław Weinberg have not been part of the so-called “musical canon”, but in recent decades we have been fortunate to witness a revival in their music.
