About Ton Koopman - Leading Dutch Baroque authority

Louise and 8 singers of De Tuin (Dutch National Choir) will get a special masterclass by Ton Koopman. Over the course of his now sixty-year career, Ton Koopman, born on 2 October 1944 in Zwolle, has become an undisputed global authority in the field of historically informed performance practice in general, and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach in particular. As such, he is one of the most important living pioneers of historically informed performance.

In the 1960s and 1970s, historically informed performance was still a niche within the classical music world. A turning point came, among other developments, with the founding of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra by Ton Koopman in 1979. Together with this orchestra and the Amsterdam Baroque Choir, founded in 1992, Koopman fundamentally changed the way music, especially that of his great love Johann Sebastian Bach, was performed and experienced.

Own Ensembles

That passion for early music emerged early in his life and remained central when, after completing secondary school, he studied organ, harpsichord and musicology in Amsterdam. During this period, he was already directing his own ensemble Musica Antiqua Amsterdam, the forerunner of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. In 1973, with this ensemble and the Collegium Vocale Gent under Philippe Herreweghe, he presented Bach’s St John Passion on period instruments for the first time in the Netherlands.

Many further premieres would follow with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir (ABO&C), as the combined ensemble has been known since 1992. Under Ton Koopman’s inspired leadership, the ensemble quickly achieved international acclaim and is regarded as one of the leading forces in historically informed performance worldwide.

Guest Conducting

As a guest conductor, Ton Koopman maintains a broad repertoire ranging from the Baroque to the early Romantic period. He is regularly invited by leading orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He is frequently asked to convey the principles and subtleties of historically informed performance to ensembles that normally perform on modern instruments. Works from the first half of the nineteenth century by composers such as Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn also regularly feature on his programmes.

Award-Winning Recordings

Ton Koopman and the ABO&C have received widespread international recognition, notably for the complete recording of all surviving cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. This monumental project was honoured with numerous awards, including the Echo Klassik (Deutscher Schallplattenpreis), the BBC Award 2008, and the Prix Hector Berlioz. Similar acclaim followed their recordings of the complete works of Dietrich Buxtehude. Since 2003, the focus of his recording activity has been on his own label Antoine Marchand, distributed by Challenge Classics.

Teacher and Scholar

Ton Koopman is also highly active as a harpsichordist and organist. He regularly performs together with his wife, harpsichordist Tini Mathot, and for many years he served as Professor of Harpsichord at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. Today, he devotes himself primarily to giving masterclasses worldwide. In addition, Ton Koopman is internationally respected as a scholar and researcher. He received an honorary doctorate from Utrecht University in 2000, is Professor Emeritus at Leiden University, and in 2016 was appointed Honorary Professor at the Musikhochschule Lübeck and the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz.

Honours and Distinctions

Among numerous distinctions, Ton Koopman has received the Bach Prize of the City of Leipzig (2006), the Buxtehude Prize of Lübeck (2012), and the Bach Prize of the Royal Academy of Music (2014). He is Chairman of the International Buxtehude Society and Artistic Director of the French music festival Itinéraire Baroque. In 2019, he became Chairman of the Bach Archive Leipzig, was appointed Honorary Member of the General Music Society of Zurich in 2024, and in the same year received the Honorary Medal of the City of Zwolle.

Library

Throughout his career, Ton Koopman has built an impressive library of books, early prints, scores and manuscripts. In 2020, this collection was entrusted to the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, ensuring that it remains accessible to future generations of musicians, musicologists and researchers, and that his work may continue to inspire and be developed by those who follow.