Yutaka Sado

Yutaka Sado has been appointed as the fifth Music Director of the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra starting with April 2023 and has appeared during the celebration of 50th anniversary of the orchestra – founded by Seiji Ozawa – including “Doors of Sumida Classic” in January 2022. Since 2015 he also serves as Music and Artistic Director of the Tonkünstler-Orchester, one of the historical Viennese orchestras; his tenure will terminate at the end of the season 2024/25 with the performance of the monumental Symphony no. 8 by Gustav Mahler in June 2025 after ten years of successful partnership marked by an intense recording and touring activity.

In Japan Yutaka Sado also serves as Artistic Director of the Hyogo Performing Arts Center (HPAC), Japan and of the HPAC's resident orchestra, since their inception in 2005 as a symbol of the spiritual and cultural rebirth of the region, which has been severely affected by the great earthquake of Kobe in 1995: in 2025 Yutaka will celebrate the 20th anniversary of his incredibly successful tenure. He has also been Principal Guest Conductor of the Filarmonica Teatro Regio Torino in Italy. For almost 20 years he served as Principal Conductor of the Orchestre Lamoureux in Paris.

The long-time assistant of Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa was awarded the most important conductor's prizes, e.g. the Premier Grand Prix at the 39th International Conducting Competition in Besançon and the Grand Prix du Concours International L. Bernstein Jerusalem. Sado's strong ties to Leonard Bernstein led him to Bernstein's Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo as 'conductor in residence'. Critics have unanimously hailed Yutaka Sado as one of the most enthralling and charismatic conductors of the new generation.　He has conducted most of the major orchestras in the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian State Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden in Germany, the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre National de France, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Italy, the National Symphony Orchestra in US and in the UK the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and the BBC Philharmonic.

As opera conductor he has experienced strong relationship with the Teatro Regio Torino in Italy and with most of the French national opera houses and with the Festival Lyrique in Aix-en-Provence.

As Artistic Director of the Hyogo Performing Arts Center (HPAC) and of the HPAC's resident orchestra, he has made the concert hall one of the most important in Japan with approximately 70.000 subscribers. Sado's degree of popularity in Japan is tremendous, especially due to his appearance as conductor and main host in the "Untitled Concert", the weekly TV program which was honored "the longest running TV program for classical music" by the Guinness World Records.

Yutaka Sado has a solid recording activity, that includes recordings with major orchestras as the DSO Berlin in Germany, the RAI Orchestra in Italy, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Switzerland, the BBC Philharmonic in UK as well as the Orchestre Lamoureux and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. He has also recorded opera arias with Karita Mattila and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.