No. 2048 Subscription (Program A)

Charles Dutoit has captivated audiences throughout the world for over six decades with his charismatic, elegant, passionate and idiomatic interpretations. He is Music Director Emeritus of the NHK Symphony Orchestra after having served as its Principal Conductor (1996–1998) and Music Director (1998–2003).
Born in Lausanne in 1936, he commenced his career as a violinist, before participating in the conducting masterclasses given by Herbert von Karajan at the Lucerne Festival. He furthered his studies by attending the legendary Ernest Ansermet’s rehearsals in Geneva. Under Ansermet’s influence, he was able to cultivate his apprenticeship of the Ballets Russes composers: Stravinsky, Ravel and Debussy. In 1959, he made his professional conducting debut with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and Martha Argerich as soloist. During his first trip to the United States, he met Pierre Monteux and Charles Munch at the Tanglewood Music School.
Former Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, he enjoyed an artistic collaboration with The Philadelphia Orchestra for thirty-two years. He was Music Director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal for twenty-five years and held the same position with L’Orchestre National de France for ten years. His interest in mentoring young artists has led to positions as Music Director of the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo and the Verbier Festival Orchestra.
His latest collaboration with the NHK Symphony Orchestra took place in October 2024 when he performed the program around Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for the NHK Music Festival. This time is his first appearance at the orchestra’s subscription concerts in eight years with two programs featuring Messiaen and Holst as well as celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Ravel’s birth.

Born in 1983, Berlin-based Japanese pianist Yu Kosuge continues to develop a distinguished international career with her superlative technique, sensitivity of touch, and profound understanding of the music she plays. After her official concert debut at age 9, she moved to Europe in 1993 to study in Hannover and Salzburg, and received great support and inspiration from András Schiff. She made her recital debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2005 and at the Salzburger Festspiel the following year. In 2010, she substituted for Ivo Pogorelich at the same festival performing with the CAMERATA Salzburg led by Philippe Herreweghe.
She regularly performs with many leading orchestras including the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and BBC Symphony Orchestra alongside renowned conductors including Seiji Ozawa, Lawrence Foster, Sakari Oramo, Osmo Vänskä, Vasily Petrenko and Dennis Russell Davies.
At her most recent collaborations with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 2022, she served as the soloist at Ravel’s concerto in G and Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. Experienced at modern and contemporary works as well, she will play a pivotal role this time at Messiaen’s grand cantata Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine with Charles Dutoit conducting the NHK Symphony Orchestra.

Born in the UK, Japanese ondist Motoko Oya was fascinated by the sound of the ondes Martenot while studying at the Tokyo University of the Arts’ Musicology Department. She has since approached, as a performer and researcher, this electronic keyboard instrument invented by Maurice Martenot (1898–1980) in France. During her studies at Conservatoire de Paris, she participated in a world tour of the Orchestre du Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris led by Zsolt Nagy playing Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine, the piece she will perform with the NHK Symphony Orchestra at the coming concert. She graduated from the Conservatoire de Paris’s Ondes Martenot department as a top student and obtained her doctoral degree in 2012 from the Tokyo University of the Arts with her research on M. Martenot.
She studied ondes Martenot under Takashi Harada and Valérie Hartmann-Claverie, and musicology under Takashi Funayama and Fuyuko Fukunaka. Her performing fields range in genres: she was an ondist at the Japanese premiere of the complete version of Messiaen’s opera Saint François d’Assise in 2017, and she participated in the recording of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s soundtrack for the American movie The Revenant in 2016.
This is her first collaboration with the NHK Symphony Orchestra since August 2018.

Tokyo Opera Singers was formed in 1992 with mid-career and young vocalists active in Tokyo in response to Seiji Ozawa’s request to establish a world-level chorus in Japan for a production of Wagner’s opera Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman). Since the year of the founding, the chorus has performed almost every year at the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto (today Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival), while working with visiting opera companies and orchestras including the Wiener Philharmoniker (under Simon Rattle and Seiji Ozawa), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Riccardo Muti) and the Bayerische Staatsoper (Wolfgang Sawallisch). The chorus has also appeared at the Spring Festival in Tokyo often under the baton of Riccardo Muti, the Edinburgh International Festival (1999), the China Shanghai International Arts Festival (2018), “Meet in Beijing” International Arts Festival (2020) and others.
Since its debut with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 2009, the chorus has regularly worked with the orchestra. Most recently, its female chorus shared the stage with Fabio Luisi and the orchestra for Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 in April 2025. At the coming concert, the female chorus will join Charles Dutoit conducting the orchestra for Messiaen’s grand cantata of which the lyrics were written by the French composer himself as well as Holst’s suit The Planets which is rarely played complete.