Violinist

After studying violin with Bouw Lemkes in Amsterdam and Josef Suk in Vienna and Prague, Johannes Leertouwer decided to focus on historical performance practice.

He served as concertmaster with leading period-instrument ensembles and orchestras, including Anima Eterna in Belgium and the Orchestra of the Netherlands Bach Society, and frequently appeared as a soloist with these groups.

Together with his duo partner Julian Reynolds, he recorded several CDs, including the complete violin sonatas of Beethoven and Schumann for Globe Records. Their most recent release – the Brahms violin sonatas on Challenge Records – was selected by the American journal Fanfare as the most remarkable standard-repertoire release of 2023.

Leertouwer is also a founding member of Ensemble Schönbrunn Amsterdam, established in 1987, with whom he has recorded works by both well-known and lesser-known composers.

In 2006, the Mozart Year, he released a highly acclaimed double CD as soloist and conductor with his own Ensemble La Borea Amsterdam, featuring the complete works for violin and orchestra by Mozart.

He is first violinist of the Narratio Quartet, which in the 2024–2025 season released the first-ever complete recording of Beethoven’s string quartets on period instruments (Challenge Records). This recording was nominated for the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

Since 1989, Leertouwer has been on the faculty of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (CvA). Over the years, he has held several positions there, including leading a violin class and serving as chief conductor of the orchestral class, Philharmonic Fridays. Since completing his PhD on the historical performance practice of Brahms’s orchestral music in 2023, he has been teaching Romantic performance style at the CvA.

Johannes Leertouwer plays a violin made by Girolamo Amati II, built around 1690 in Cremona.

Conductor

Johannes Leertouwer has been chief conductor and artistic director of the Nieuwe Philharmonie Utrecht (NPhU) since its founding. The orchestra made a highly successful debut in September 2009 with a Stravinsky and Ravel programme. Over the past fifteen years, they have presented a series of remarkable projects. The orchestra performs on period instruments — also in 19th- and early 20th-century repertoire — with a strong focus on education, reflecting the vision of its chief conductor.

Leertouwer studied conducting with David Porcelijn and Jorma Panula. Conducting developed naturally from his work as concertmaster and orchestral coach. After guest conducting orchestras such as the Osaka Symphoniker, Orchestre de la Région Île-de-France, the North Netherlands Orchestra, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, and the Netherlands Bach Society, he was appointed to his post in Utrecht in 2009.

With the NPhU, he has led a series of projects that have been widely acclaimed. Of his historically informed Brahms performances, de Volkskrant wrote in 2015: “Leertouwer delivers a powerful and highly contrasted Brahms.” Annual performances of Matthäus Passion and Messiah under his direction have received numerous five-star reviews. Recordings of Beethoven symphonies and Berio’s Chorale with violinist Joe Puglia (on gut strings) have also been highly praised.

In 2017, as part of the Musica Sacra festival, Leertouwer presented Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 on gut strings — the first such performance in the Netherlands since the early 20th century, when this was common practice.

Since 2021, Leertouwer has produced his projects under the Johannes & Friends Foundation. Its guiding principles include historically informed performance based on original research and collaboration between three generations of musicians: experienced professionals, recent graduates, and students. The orchestra functions as a laboratory where new ideas are developed and shared, and knowledge is actively exchanged.

Researcher

These same principles also underpinned the work of the project orchestra central to Leertouwer’s four-year PhD research project (2019–2023) on the historical performance practice of Brahms’s orchestral music at Leiden University. He received his doctorate in January 2023 after successfully defending his dissertation, Re-inventing the Nineteenth-Century Tools of Unprescribed Modifications of Rhythm and Tempo in Performances of Brahms’s Symphonies and Concertos. This research included recordings of all four symphonies and four concertos by Brahms.

Since 2023, Leertouwer has been leading annual orchestral projects devoted to Robert Schumann’s symphonies and concertos through a collaboration between the NPhU and the CvA. From 2022 to 2025, he also held the position of Professor of Historically Informed Performance Practice at Seoul National University in South Korea.

Leertouwer is passionate about sharing his research and performances with audiences. He created a 68-episode video series on each movement of Bach’s Matthäus Passion for Brava TV, now available on YouTube as De Matthäus volgens Johannes, and produced a podcast on Handel’s Messiah with music journalist and broadcaster Lex Bohlmeier for NPO Radio 4. He also shares the results of his Brahms research through his website and a six-part NPO podcast.

In autumn 2025, he founded the Beethoven Academy Utrecht under the umbrella of the NPhU. The aim of this initiative is to perform all of Beethoven’s symphonies with an orchestra working according to the principles developed in his Brahms research. Leertouwer is convinced that applying the insights gained from the last two decades of historical performance research will lead to exciting new discoveries, also in this perhaps all too familiar repertoire