I am proud to address you with these words as the new appointed Chief conductor of the Tokyo Phil.
After 5 years of building together a road of musical language, sound and interpretation of a large and vast repertoire, I invite you to join this road with us to a new journey of musical experience.
I believe that the orchestra and I, as well as you, are going on a new way, or shall we say, take a new turn in our musical journey.
Over the past 5 years the orchestra musicians and I have enjoyed discovering how much we have in common in our musical taste, ambitions, stamina and passion for our art and life.
This very special connection between me and orchestra, and the flow of energy between us - this is what you, our audience, are experiencing in our concerts, beyond your beloved music of your favorite composers.
This energy and the power of communicating through genius pieces of music and the language of music, without the boundaries of age, nationality or culture differences - is the real magic of what we are doing.
It's not only magic, or an emotional journey for you, and an artistic working place for us - the language of music should be one of the important things in our daily life, so I believe.
We wish that each one of us, musicians and audience, will take their experience from the concert halls, and integrated them in their everyday life's communication and behavior.
I have always been fascinated by the working mentality and discipline of our orchestra musicians. This and the high level of musicianship had inspired me tremendously in the past years in my work all over the world and encouraged me to come back and grow together with this orchestra, which is on one hand the oldest one in Japan, and on the other hand a fresh, young and continuously growing and improving orchestra.
I am honored to have been chosen to join the orchestra on it's 100 anniversary , and to be welcomed by them and by you, loving audience, to your family.
Together, we wish to continue and bring to you the best of the symphonic, choral, operatic and chamber music repertoire on it's highest level.
I am convinced that the Tokyo Phil has something very special to offer to their devoted Japanese public, as well as to the rest of the world and want invest my best energies and skills to bring TPO to the international music scene on the stage platform and in CD's and DVD's recordings.
