Subscription Concerts 2024-2025Program B
No. 2037 Subscription (Program B)

Fabio Luisi hails from Genoa. He is the Principal Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He first conducted the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 2001, and in September 2022 he became Chief Conductor of the orchestra. He conducted Verdi’s Requiem in the concert to celebrate his appointment, and Mahler’s Symphonie der Tausend to commemorate the orchestra’s 2000th subscription concert in December 2023. These two monumental performances have brought him great success. He has presented works of German and Austrian composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and R. Strauss as well as those of Franck and Saint-Saëns, Francophone composers, and with his conducting style full of passion and poetic sentiment, has captured the hearts of many of audience members. In August 2024, he led the orchestra’s Taiwanese tour, and then will also lead a European tour in May 2025, which has been scheduled in conjunction with the Mahler Festival at The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, the Prague Spring Festival and the Dresdner Musikfestspiele to which the NHK Symphony Orchestra has been invited.
He was General Music Director of the Opernhaus Zürich, Principal Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Principal Conductor of the Wiener Symphoniker, as well as General Music Director of the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Sächsische Staatsoper, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Music Director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Chief Conductor of the Tonkünstler Orchester. He is Music Director of the Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca (Apulia) and has appeared as guest conductor with numerous renowned ensembles, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Münchener Philharmoniker, the Filarmonica della Scala, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Saito Kinen Orchestra, while also conducting operas at world’s major opera houses. Important recordings include Verdi, Bellini, Schumann, Berlioz, Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Frank Martin, and Franz Schmidt, the largely forgotten Austrian composer. In addition, he has recorded various symphonic poems by Richard Strauss, and a lauded reading of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 with the Staatskapelle Dresden. His recordings of Wagner’s Siegfried and Götterdämmerung with the Metropolitan Opera won Grammy awards. In May 2025, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 (1st version), which is his first CD with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, will be released.

After becoming the youngest winner of the Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1990, Akiko Suwanai has continued to make successful performances worldwide. She learned under the tutelage of Toshiya Eto, and studied at the Soloist Diploma Course of Toho Gakuen School of Music, the Juilliard School, Columbia University and the Berlin University of the Arts. In addition to her performing career, she founded the International Music Festival NIPPON in 2012, and as its Artistic Director, has held concerts and master classes in Tokyo, Aichi as well as in cities in northern Japan.
Her first appearance with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in its subscription concert was in November 1991, and she performed Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 under the baton of Tadaaki Otaka. In the International Music Festival NIPPON in February 2022, she played Dutilleux’s Nocturne for Violin and Orchestra Sur le même accord and Brahms’ Violin Concerto with the NHK Symphony Orchestra under Otaka’s baton, which was well received.
In the coming performance, she will perform Berg’s Violin Concerto, which she is also to perform in three cities in the subsequent European tour of the orchestra. Her performance with her beloved violin, the Guarneri del Gesu ‘Charles Reade’ made in 1732 (on long-term loan from Dr. Ryuji Ueno), which has both luster and strength, she will surely deliver a transient yet aesthetic sound to the audience.

[Kotaro Yamazaki, music critic]

Maki Mori is a soprano with a high and clear voice and coloratura singing technique. She studied at Tokyo University of the Arts and its postgraduate course, as well as in Milan and Munich, and has won top prizes at home and abroad, including the Plácido Domingo World Opera Competition “Operalia.”
In 1998, she was the first Japanese to appear at the Washington National Opera in the United States singing in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. She has continuously appeared at opera house in the U.S. as well as Europe, while also performing in many opera productions in Japan, singing roles including Violetta in La Traviata, as well as recitals and concerts nationwide. She is also popularly known for the main theme music for NHK television’s special drama titled Saka no Ue no Kumo (Clouds above the Hill).
Her first collaboration with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in its subscription concert was in May 2000 when she appeared as soloist to sing Mozart’s motette of Exsultate, Jubilate under the baton of David Robertson. Since then, she has often appeared with the orchestra singing Mozart Requiem and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 Choral.
The soprano in the final movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 is singing of a happy life in heaven in a light and lovely way, so it will suit her perfectly.

[Kotaro Yamazaki, music critic]