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.
Violinist Shunske Sato leads the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra in an historically informed performance of early 19th-century music, including a spectacular rendering of Louis Spohr's Violin Concerto no. 8 in A minor.
Van Cliburn winner Yunchan Lim, in his concerto debut with the Tokyo Philharmonic, shares the stage with Mikhail Pletnev to give a suave performance of Beethoven's “Emperor” Concerto.
Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony's three-concert residency at Tokyo's Suntory Hall culminates in a brilliantly evocative performance of Strauss' Alpine Symphony.
Laurent Pelly's Night in the Museum production of Giulio Cesare is finally staged at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, after its 2020 pandemic cancellation.
For whatever reason Fabio Luisi chose Verdi's Requiem for his inauguration concert with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo, it turned out to be an apt and poignant choice.
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.
