Received the 2023 Music Pen Club Music Award

The winners of the 2023 Music Pen Club Music Awards have been announced, with the Japan Philharmonic winning the Opera Orchestra category.

The Music Pen Club Music Award is an annual music award presented by the Music Pen Club Japan, which has approximately 160 members. The awards are made up of critics, music writers, musicologists, composers, performers, literary critics, and others involved in music-related writing and commentary in the three fields of "classical," "popular," and "audio."

Reason for the award:

The Chief Conductor, Singaporean Kah Chun Wong, who took office in September 2023, is the first Asian conductor of a nationality other than Japanese, Chinese, or Korean to lead a Japanese orchestra. It can be seen as a revival of the enterprising spirit of the time when the orchestra was founded by Watanabe Akio in 1956 as a rival to the NHK Symphony Orchestra, and by contrasting Western classical works such as Mahler with new and old Japanese and Asian works by composers like Ifukube Akira and Takemitsu Toru, he clearly indicates the direction that Japanese orchestras should aim for in the 21st century. More than half a century has passed since the 1972 split of the former Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and the orchestra has regained the strength of a major orchestra in both name and reality. (Ikeda Takuo)

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who has supported us.