The Tokyo Philharmonic’s early concerts this year present an unusual spectacle: Myung-whun Chung at the piano. While the orchestra’s Honorary Music Director began musical life as a pianist, his piano performances have become rare things indeed. After a 40-year career as a conductor, Chung’s first solo piano release came in 2014, and included Beethoven’s Für Elise. The concerts in Tokyo this February are likewise Beethovenian, with Chung joining young soloists Hina Maeda and Jaemin Han for Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.
Chung won’t be at the piano when he returns the following month to conduct Mozart’s Concerto no. 10 for two pianos, but fellow South Korean Yekwon Sunwoo will. The concerts in Tokyo and Seoul, which also include Mahler’s First Symphony, present an unusual collaboration between the Tokyo Philharmonic and Seoul’s KBS Symphony Orchestra, where Chung is also Conductor Laureate. Sunwoo is joined by Japanese pianist Kaoruko Igarashi – the concert, devised by Chung, marks 60 years since Japan and South Korea normalised diplomatic relations. Even in the years since it has been a turbulent relationship, though if anyone can straddle this historic divide, it is Chung.
Chief Conductor Andrea Battistoni’s first concerts of 2025 follow hot on the heels of the orchestra’s return from Seoul. His first programme of the year pairs Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, together with Weber’s overture to Oberon. It is a programme linked through the person of Léonide Massine, who danced Petrushka alongside Nijinsky with the Ballets Russes in the late 1910s. Massine later collaborated with Hindemith on Nobilissima Visione, and suggested Hindemith arrange Weber’s music for another ballet. Though the Symphonic Metamorphosis emerged with intentions to be a concert work, it would soon be choreographed by another son of the Ballets Russes, George Balanchine.
After a Dubai tour, the orchestra returns to Tokyo in April for a programme conducted by Tadaaki Otaka, including Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. 2025 marks Ravel’s 150th anniversary, an occasion orchestras and soloists across the world will be observing. Renowned Japanese pianist Izumi Tateno joins the orchestra: since suffering a stroke on stage in 2002, Tateno has only been able to use the left side of his body. He has continued to perform frequently, promoting piano music for the left hand, and also teaches at the Sibelius Academy in Finland, where he has lived since 1964. Otaka also conducts Elgar’s unfinished Third Symphony (as completed by Anthony Payne) as well as music by his brother Atsutada Otaka.
In May, Special Guest Conductor Mikhail Pletnev joins the orchestra, for a programme of his own arrangements of Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Kanon Matsuda joins as piano soloist in Chopin’s First Piano Concerto – she performed with Pletnev in 2012, when he toured Japan with the Russian National Orchestra. Pletnev also performs his own suite from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, perhaps Tchaikovsky’s finest ballet score. In making his own arrangement, Pletnev follows both Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, the latter of whom rescored it for orchestra on the basis of only the piano score – all that was available in Paris in 1921. As it had been for Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky’s ballet is close to Pletnev’s heart, frequently appearing in his orchestral and recital programmes.
Pinchas Zukerman returns to Tokyo in June to perform both as conductor and as violin soloist in Haydn’s First Violin Concerto. Like Haydn’s other works in this genre, this is an early piece from the 1760s – indeed, it was only rediscovered in 1909, in the archive of publisher Breikopf. (Few copies survive, and one other of Haydn’s four attested violin concertos is still lost.) Zukerman’s last visit to Tokyo was in 2023, where he performed Mozart, and on this occasion Zukerman also leads Mozart’s last symphonic masterwork, the Jupiter Symphony. He also leads Elgar’s Serenade for Strings, one of the composer’s most frequently performed pieces.
The young violinist Fumiaki Miura has been mentored by Zukerman, and also leads the orchestra from the violin a month later, in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. The orchestra’s summertime is distinctly Tchaikovskian, with Mayuko Kamio performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto together with the Sixth Symphony in July, conducted by Min Chung, Tokyo Phil’s Associate Conductor. The orchestra performs Tchaikovsky excerpts in their afternoon concerts in August, as well as other sunny items.
Andrea Battistoni returns in September with Pizzetti’s summer-infused Concerto dell’estate – before autumn rears its stormy head in Strauss’ Alpensinfonie. Battistoni also conducts an appropriately Ravelian programme later in September, including the violin concertante showpiece Tzigane and the inescapably catchy Boléro. The orchestra also performs Ravel’s popular G major Piano Concerto in October.
The final subscription concert of this season in October sees the return of Myung-whun Chung, for a programme of jazz-infused classics. Jazz pianist Makoto Ozone joins the orchestra for Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Ozone is a frequent soloist with orchestras (recent appearances include Rotterdam Philharmonic), and he is a prolific recording artist, cutting releases with Gary Burton and Chick Corea. The programme is rounded out with appropriately balletic selections: Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
See all upcoming performances by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
This preview was sponsored by the Tokyo Philharmonic.
