We embarked on tour to Japan at the end of our 2024-25 Season.

We were extremely excited to head back to the home country of our Music Director, Kazuki Yamada, this season. We were joined by guest soloists Hisako Kawamura, Sheku Kanneh-Mason and Yunchan Lim for an epic programme of music: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto 2 and 4, Shostakovich Festival Overture, Ravel La Valse, Elgar Cello Concerto, Tchaikovsky Symphony No.5 and Mussorgsky Pictures At An Exhibition.

We travelled across the country, playing in some of the finest concert halls in Japan, if not the world. We performed eight concerts in total across the trip and for many of our orchestra members, this was their first time in Japan as well as the first time on a CBSO tour.

Second violinist Lowri reflects on her time away and gives us a short insight into what it was like to tour with the CBSO.

This tour was my first experience of Japan both professionally and personally - the closest I had been before was Hong Kong and my overriding memory of it was enduring severe jet lag.

CBSO musicians were really excited about this trip, but I was a little nervous about my capacity to actually get up in the morning, especially given that on the Hong Kong trips I hadn’t ever made it out of bed before lunchtime! I made plans to beat it… taking advice from old hands by starting to acclimatise to the new time zone a few days before, powering through to 10pm when we landed and then getting a decent night’s sleep. Just as I was congratulating myself on having “solved” it, jet lag struck on the second night, but even the middle of the night 3am wakefulness thankfully passed in time.

The other feeling I had for the first week or so was just pure overwhelm. Everything was different. Gloriously so in some respects - the cleanliness, the vending machines selling everything from macarons to cold drinks (thankfully), the bullet trains with seats that change direction and are precision timed (I think the poor guards didn’t quite know what to do with so many people trying to get off all at once), the respect that everyone shows to each other, the snacks at every single concert hall, just to name a few…

I never quite got used to the extraordinary humidity or heat, but spent quite a lot of my time hopping from air-conditioned place to air-conditioned place.

One of the experiences I found most rewarding was the masterclass Kazuki gave to four conducting students in Tokyo – getting an insight into how he thinks about what he does and watching him get the best out of those students was fascinating.

Then there were the concerts themselves. Whilst all were met with warmth (both in heat and reception) and even some with very impressive signs held aloft from the audience, Suntory Hall was the one I was waiting for.

Before we left, everyone had told me Suntory Hall was incredible, and the hype was entirely justified. We had to have a second violin team photo to mark the occasion. The hall itself is stunning but to be able to hear so well across the orchestra and be able to hear yourself as well is something that doesn’t happen all that often on tour. We are definitely spoilt in Birmingham with Symphony Hall.

In all of the Japanese halls there were multiple curtain calls and Kazuki was constantly beckoned back on to the stage, often encouraging lots of us with him.

We met the young superstar pianist Yunchan Lim in Nagoya and each time we played with him I had a birds-eye view straight down the keyboard – the emotional expression and technical capacity he showed was utterly incredible every night, but was particularly electric in Suntory Hall and Yokohama. I’m excited to revisit Rachmaninoff’s least well-known piano concerto, the fourth, with him at the BBC Proms in a few weeks.

We had two young Japanese musicians sponsored by Japan Arts joining us on tour.

One was a young Japanese conductor, Shinnosuke Ito, assisting Kazuki. On the last night in Yokohama he conducted the first encore and his positivity and obvious delight that night were very moving to see.

The other was a violinist, Asako Fukuda, who played in both violin sections and I hope she gained a lot from the experience.

We also had local school brass bands joining us for four of the concerts in Shostakovich’s Festive Overture and the standard was amazing – I was particularly struck by the number of girls in these bands and their infectious enthusiasm.

The second violin team did themselves proud every night, as they always do and we celebrated on our last night in Tokyo with a dinner party organised by our own Japanese member, Yuriko, who took us all out for Okonomiyaki and taught us how to cook them.

All I can say is… roll on next time!