12.09.2026

DAVID STEFFENS performing "The Book with Seven Seals" with the NHK Symphony

We recognise it from early Christian mosaics, medieval illuminated manuscripts, Romanesque portals, Dürer’s woodcuts or Ingmar Bergman’s film *The Seventh Seal*: the Apocalypse according to John. A musical exploration of this biblical book is one of the great exceptions: Franz Schmidt, who was born in the same year as Arnold Schoenberg in what was then Pressburg (Bratislava) and later worked in Vienna, dedicated a monumental composition to it in the form of his late-Romantic ‘Book with Seven Seals’, which he composed between 1935 and 1937 in complete seclusion whilst already seriously ill.

Fabio Luisi, Chief Conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, regularly performs this imposing and unconventional oratorio as part of his international conducting career, and is also including it in the programme for the two subscription concerts on 12 and 13 September as part of the celebrations marking the orchestra’s 100th anniversary.

David Steffens, who has enjoyed a long-standing artistic collaboration with Fabio Luisi and the orchestra, will be heard in these two concerts as the Voice of the Lord – a solo part with which he also appeared last year with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra at the Vienna Konzerthaus (also conducted by Luisi) and at the Bratislava Music Festival.

Cast

Michael Laurenz, tenor (Johannes)
David Steffens, bass (Voice of God)
Miho Sakoda, soprano
Asami Fujii, mezzo soprano
Tatsundo Ito, tenor
Hirotaka Kato, bass
Eri Niiyama, organ

Fabio Luisi, conductor
New National Theatre Chorus
Kyohei Tomihira, chorus master