My name is Sayuri Yamagata and I have been playing the violin in the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century since 1985. I am also (deputy) concertmaster with the Netherlands Bach Society and have performed a great deal of chamber music with, amongst others, Sigiswald Kuijken, Gustav Leonhardt, Bob van Asperen and Anner Bijlsma. I also teach at the Conservatoire of Amsterdam.
My parents gave me my first little violin (a 1/16th size!) when I was just two years old. My brother, five years older than me, was taking violin lessons and I really wanted to join in. Later, I went on to study modern violin at the conservatoire in Tokyo, where I had the opportunity to discover Early Music. It was a perfect fit, and I was immediately captivated by the idea of the Early Music movement, which was very unknown in Japan at the time.
For me, it was the simplest and most straightforward way to understand and perform music. At the time, there was nowhere in Japan where one could study the Baroque violin. So I decided to come to The Hague to study Baroque violin with Lucy van Dael. She was concertmaster of the O18C, and just six months after I arrived in The Hague, I received a phone call inviting me to join the orchestra. I’ve been here ever since. My time with the orchestra now accounts for almost two-thirds of my life, so I can safely say it’s one of my most important life experiences!
Frans Brüggen was very strict and precise with the first violins when it came to articulation, phrasing and so on. I was always quite nervous. We had group rehearsals very often, and we certainly needed them because everyone had a completely different way of playing and intonation. One day, instead of the group rehearsal, we played table tennis – and afterwards we sounded considerably better!
As well as all the musical activities my husband (also a violinist) and I undertook, we ran a business for a long time. We produced and sold Japanese miso ourselves. It was very labour-intensive work, but it was fascinating for us to practise a completely different profession. We learnt a great deal from it!
