David Hill: Where did you study and when did you feel you were moving in the direction of Baroque music, and in particular Bach?

Masaaki Suzuki: My mother was a professional soprano and my father loved playing the piano in his spare time - which he did right to the end of his life. His favourite piece was Chopin's Nocturne in F sharp major; my brother and I ended up being able to play that piece by heart! When I was 12, I started playing for services in a Lutheran church with a very encouraging pastor. However, it was on a harmonium, which makes playing Bach very difficult. I started organ lessons as a high school student with priest and musicologist Robert Vliegen. I was told it wasn't really possible to study the organ more intensively in Japan, and it was suggested, why not study composition instead? So my main study was in composition in Tokyo University, which turned out really well for me, particularly seeing how composition really works: but I did study organ too. While I was a student, a club started of Bach fans interested in performing Bach's cantatas, which was kind of crazy, but interesting to me and where I started discovering this great music. The leader and teacher of the club was the eminent harpsichordist Michio Kobayashi, who was such an influence on the early music movement in Japan. He showed us the cantatas, motets and sacred music of Bach. I went back and taught at the university where the club still exists. Then I moved on to Amsterdam to find out more about early music and study harpsichord and organ. Funnily, I never talked with Ton Koopman, my teacher, about the church cantatas - only the keyboard music. I was completely captivated by Bach's organ and harpsichord music, which then led me to discover more about the cantatas later in my life.

DH: How did that happen?

MS: There was a library very close to the Tokyo University of the Arts which had shelves of LPs of the cantatas, and I decided to listen to them all! At that time there were the Leonhardt recordings alongside the many different recordings of other conductors which were completely fascinating to me. This is when the cantatas became a central part of my life.

DH: Ton Koopman was a student of Leonhardts, wasn't he? Do you feel part of that lineage?

MS: Yes. Although I didn't officially study with Leonhardt in the conservatory, he took an interest in what I was doing and would write and ask why I had chosen a particular pitch or whatever. Whenever I met him, he would be eager to know which cantatas I was recording. If I said volume 20 he would say, ‘I don't care about which volume, but which cantatas are you recording now?’ He could be a little short-tempered!

DH: Did you work with Nikolaus Harnoncourt?

MS: No, but I met him when he received a very prestigious award in Kyoto. I was asked to be on the panel of the conference which presented him with the award. I talked to him many times and was in Vienna when he announced his retirement from conducting; he died only a couple of months later.

DH: What spurred you into creating Bach Collegium Japan [BCJ]?

MS: I founded it in 1990, though there was some pre-history of performing. I returned to Japan having studied in Amsterdam in 1983. Soon after that, in 1985, there was the big Bach 300th anniversary. Naturally I wanted to do something to celebrate this great moment, and formed a small choir and gathered some colleagues and friends to perform Bach's works.

DH: Did you feel you were having to coach the singing and playing in a particular way?

MS: I had studied earlier music only using period instruments, and never performed Bach with modern instruments. I was very lucky in my brother, a cellist, who had also studied abroad; between us we could bring together players able to understand period performance, many of them having studied in Europe and then returned to Japan.

DH: This was the foundation on which BCJ was built, presumably?

MS: Yes. This was a very happy time, with colleagues and friends increasingly returning to Japan to find opportunities of performing together. The period from 1985-90 was a preparation time for us. I was a professor of Kobe Shoin Women's University at the time, planning and organising a regular series of concerts in their beautiful chapel. It wasn't yet fully professional but moving in that direction. For instance, I couldn't find a Baroque bassoonist anywhere, so I'd have to ask a friend to transpose the music down a semitone!

DH: What about trumpets and oboe da caccia players?

MS: Yes, we wouldn't have all we needed and would need to bring friends from Europe, although in all these areas, players were working out the different playing techniques in Japan. But what was very nice was the sharing of talent coming into our projects. It was a very positive time. In 1990, I was asked to perform Bach cantatas and Magnificat for the inaugural concert in the newest hall in Osaka. That was an amazing opportunity to form a special ensemble.

DH: Would you say that was the launch of BCJ?

MS: Yes, exactly; along with the launch of the concert hall was the very big series of concerts they would promote. This gave us many opportunities for BCJ focusing seriously on early music programmes.

DH: Knowing how modest you are, I'm still going to ask you: presumably this moment - and since - changed the musical landscape in Japan?

MS: Yes, I suppose so! It's a gradual change, of course. Our recordings began in 1995, and since then we've been dedicated to that, alongside a busy schedule of concerts.

DH: We all know how effective recordings can be.

MS: Yes, and the recording company insisted that we had to produce the highest international quality. We knew that really good singers and players were required, and at the very beginning of the process it wasn't always easy to fulfil that brief; but gradually it became very good. In the exchange with our European musicians, our Japanese friends and colleagues were very stimulated by the collaborations, so I made a rule that the collaborations should continue.

DH: To me, and others I suspect, your life reminds me of Bach's in many ways: you're an organist, harpsichordist, you work with voices and you have studied composition. What's your reaction to that?

MS: Yes, you are right! I always feel lucky I'm an organist, harpsichordist and conductor, though I can't play the violin, which Bach did! But this broader experience is very important to me in understanding and performing his music. He was firstly a church musician. Our institution is very different, but nevertheless I still play for church services and feel the context in which he was working and I think it's very important to keep this relationship.

DH: What of Bach's output have you recorded to date?

MS: All of his vocal works except for the E flat major Magnificat. We have just recorded some miscellaneous songs from the Anna Magdalena Music Notebook and the Schemelli Collection. I'm working through all his harpsichord works, with The Art of Fugue on the horizon to record. I've finished volumes 3 and 4 of the organ works and think there are five or six more CDs to do, if CDs continue to exist!

DH: Do you agree the CD is a concept with a plan and that let's hope CDs continue to be made, not least as one-off downloads are not likely to be reviewed?

MS: Yes, I completely agree. I like to create a programme - like a concert - of works which relate to each other: mixing up the music makes it far more interesting.

DH: Are you planning on performing and recording works other than Bach?

MS: I'm very interested in following this line of sacred choral works through history. For instance, Bach's B minor Mass, Mozart's C minor Mass, Beethoven's D major Mass, going through to the oratorios of Mendelssohn; and I'm now planning to do Brahms's Requiem with period instruments as well. Brahms is quite close to our age, relatively, and I'm intrigued to know how it will work with the period instruments and how much proper evaluation has to be done.

‘I hope to help more musicians in Japan to discover the music I've been describing’ © MARCO BORGGREVE

DH: We did a Brahms concert in Yale using period instruments and gut strings - on modern instruments - and it was revelatory.

MS: Interesting: the problem for modern orchestral string players is they are far too busy to be able to experiment with gut strings. You have to take much greater care of them than steel strings, but I know it would be really worth doing. You know, Stravinsky and Mahler would only have known gut strings…

DH: And with little or no vibrato…

MS: Absolutely. In Mahler's Symphony no.4, he marks con vibrato - with vibrato - in particular places. That surely means it's not required otherwise!

DH: What about other composers? Dvořák?

MS: Yes, I would love to record the Stabat Mater and Requiem. Because of the pandemic, I missed the chance of recording Mendelssohn's Elijah and St Paul - we were only able to give concerts of them. I'm looking for another opportunity to record those.

DH: Do you think organists need to be more rounded as musicians, given the earlier reference to the life of Bach?

MS: I agree that it's a pity organists can so often seem isolated from the wider musical world, and that reading and understanding a wider variety of music allows the mind to become more open. It's very important to appreciate the wider context of organ and church music.

DH: And the future?

MS: My hope for the future is to help more musicians in Japan to discover more of the music I've been describing. We are making progress and my son, Masato, now conducts half of our concerts in Japan, as I am also travelling more and more abroad to symphony orchestras. This handing over experience isn't always easy but very necessary, and the right direction for BCJ.

DH: Thank you, Masaaki, for this fascinating conversation.