Netherlands Bach Society - Artistic Leader
Munich Bach Choir and Bach Orchestra - Artistic Director
capella sollertia - Artistic Leader
Johanna Soller is a conductor, harpsichordist and organist, and one of the most versatile artists of her generation. Rooted in historical performance practice, her passion for words and musical speech in particular forms the basis of her musical work. In May 2025 she took up her appointment as Artistic Leader of the Netherlands Bach Society, whose tour of Bach's St Matthew Passion she conducted in 2024. She has been Artistic Director of the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra since the 2023/24 season and will hold this position until July 2026.
She also established the baroque ensemble capella sollertia, consisting of a professional vocal ensemble and an orchestra on period instruments, with whom she organizes the Bach cantata series Cantate um 1715 in Munich. A focus of the ensemble's work is the rediscovery of forgotten works from Bach’s environment. A complete recording of Johann Ludwig Bach's cantatas is published with the label Ricercar in January 2026.
Johanna Soller is a regular guest conductor both with baroque ensembles and modern orchestras, such as the Dunedin Consort, Munich Symphony Orchestra and the Orquesta de Córdoba. Future highlights include the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the B’Rock Orchestra, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra.
As a sought-after choral conductor and specialist for vocal music, she has rehearsed for ensembles such as the MDR Radio Choir Leipzig, as well as for conductors such as Zubin Mehta and Sir Simon Rattle. She was scholarship holder in the Conducting Forum of the German Music Council.
Soller is also in demand in the field of opera, where she has made a name for herself as Maestra al cembalo. In 2025 she conducted Handel’s Susanna at Opera North. She was previously engaged as a Studienleiter at the Theater of Wien. Her debut as an opera conductor she made with Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto. From 2019 to 2023, she was Musical Director of the Munich Chamber Opera, where she conducted productions such as Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. In the current season she leads at Kammerakademie Potsdam.
Soller has been teaching her own oratorio class as well as basso continuo playing and sight reading at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich.
An accomplished basso continuo player, both on harpsichord and organ, she has performed with ensembles such as the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and Vox Luminis. Her chamber music partners include artists such as Kristin von der Goltz. Sonatas by Fontana and Castelli have been released on CD with oboist Tamar Inbar. From 2016 to 2025, Soller held the position of main organist at Munich's oldest parish church St. Peter. Solo recitals have taken her to major organ concert series.
Soller is a prizewinner of the Prague Spring International Music Competition and a scholarship holder of the German Music Competition. She was awarded the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize and the Eugen Jochum Prize for Conductors.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
Handel Susanna, Opera North
(October 2025)
That’s all matched by excellent playing from the Opera North orchestra. The young conductor Johanna Soller is clearly a baroque specialist with a real gift for dramatic pacing. The two don’t always go together.
The Times
Meanwhile, Johanna Soller does an excellent job in the pit, instruments scrupulously balanced, nature imagery deftly conjured, and tempi judiciously chosen. The Opera North Chorus are outstanding, singing and acting with enormous power and precision.
The Guardian
Conductor Johanna Soller’s judicious tempos allowed the passion and stateliness of Handel’s music to shine through.
The Telegraph
Johanna Soller conducted the Orchestra of Opera North with a sensitive, responsive touch that made the music feel alive. Handel’s score can so easily become esoteric and ornate, but last night it felt supple and human. It’s easy to take fine orchestration for granted, but when every section feels perfectly balanced, you realise how rare it is when everything simply fits.
Northern Arts Review
Johanna Soller, a specialist in baroque style, conducts from one of two harpsichords and obtains both suitably weighty tone and periodic contrasting lightness from the Orchestra of Opera North, with skilfully chosen tempi.
The Arts Desk
The orchestra conducted by Johanna Soller was appropriately sensitive to the needs of an essentially intimate, relatively understated drama with tragic and euphoric moments.
Bachtrack
Bach St Matthew Passion, Munich Bach Choir
Isarphilharmonie (April 2025)
(…) unprecedented orchestral nuances, vocal colour and dynamic differentiation, and fluid, naturally correct tempi: she achieves the miracle of intensification through restraint.
Peter Krause, concerti
Mendelssohn Elijah, Munich Bach Choir
Basilika Ottobeuren (July 2024)
Premiere in the basilica: for the first time, a woman conducts a large orchestral concert in Ottobeuren. Johanna Soller conducted the interpretation magnificently. Mendelsohn's oratorio "Elijah" is a musical delight in the Ottobeuren Basilica. Conductor Johanna Soller played a large part in this. Sing to the Lord a new song! This call from the psalmist was heard in Ottobeuren. Not only was Johanna Soller the first female conductor to stand at the podium of a major orchestral concert. The way she conducts the Munich Bach Choir and Bach Orchestra, which she took over in 2023, can be described as a quantum leap. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's Elijah sounded transparent and sensuous, perfectly crafted down to the last detail. A pioneering performance in every Detail. Even in Ottobeuren, it is rare to experience an interpretation that is so intelligently staggered, so well organised down to the last detail and adapted to the space. And the choral voices were of excellent quality - a real treat. (…) Much could be written and praised. About the angel choirs, for example. Or about the reminiscences of Bach (fugue of the overture, folk scenes). In short: this was a world-class performance. An exciting, dramatic sacred opera in the best sense of the word. The development of the Munich ensemble under Johanna Soller is something one would like to follow regularly in Ottobeuren. She is effortlessly travelling in the big shoes of her predecessors, on her own path.
Allgäuer Zeitung
Göttinger Händel-Festspiele
(2020)
(...) Johanna Soller played the harpsichord in a heart-rending way. With her movements, it was as if she carried her feelings into the sounds: she brought the harpsichord to new life.
Hessische Niedersächsische Allgemeine
Bavarian Arts Award 2020, Jury Statement
(...) her stylistic range and her unique combination of emotion, focused energy and intelligent probing of the score
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