Netherlands Bach Society - Artistic Leader
capella sollertia - Artistic Leader
Johanna Soller is Artistic Leader of the Netherlands Bach Society and one of the most distinctive voices in historically informed performance today. A conductor, harpsichordist and organist, she combines deep knowledge of the repertoire with a flair for programming and musical discovery, while her work extends well beyond the Baroque. In 2026, her recording of the Leipzig cantatas of Johann Ludwig Bach with capella sollertia, the ensemble she founded, won the Gramophone Classical Music Award in the Choral category.
Since taking up her position as Artistic Leader of the Netherlands Bach Society in 2025, Soller has been shaping the next chapter of one of the world’s foremost Bach ensembles. Central to her artistic vision is an exceptional instinct for programming: creating programmes and shaping seasons that illuminate familiar repertoire from new perspectives, uncover neglected works and draw connections across centuries. Her first seasons place Bach and his contemporaries alongside composers including Arvo Pärt, John Cage, Stravinsky and Mathilde Wantenaar, demonstrating both the breadth of her musical interests and her ambition for the ensemble.
Alongside her work with the Netherlands Bach Society, Soller conducts leading period ensembles and symphony orchestras across Europe. Recent and forthcoming engagements include the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Kammerakademie Potsdam, BBC Philharmonic, Hallé Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Collegium Vocale Gent, B'Rock Orchestra and Bachstiftung St Gallen. She has also worked with the Dunedin Consort and Munich Symphony Orchestra, and from 2023 to 2026 was Artistic Director of the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra. Her repertoire spans Monteverdi, Bach and Handel through Mozart and Mendelssohn to Frank Martin, Stravinsky, Pärt and contemporary music.
Opera is also an important part of her work. In 2025 she conducted Handel’s Susanna for Opera North, where The Times singled out her “real gift for dramatic pacing”. She subsequently conducted Johann Christian Bach’s Zanaida with Kammerakademie Potsdam at the Potsdamer Winteroper, with performances praised for their theatrical vitality, rhythmic precision and instrumental detail. Future engagements include Cavalli’s Eliogabalo at the Komische Oper Berlin and a Mozart opera for her debut at Garsington Opera with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Soller founded capella sollertia, a professional vocal ensemble and period-instrument orchestra, with whom she has developed a particular focus on lesser-known seventeenth- and eighteenth-century repertoire. Their four-disc recording for Ricercar of the 18 surviving church cantatas of Johann Ludwig Bach was the first complete recording of the works and brought this remarkable body of music to new international attention. Alongside the 2026 Gramophone Classical Music Award, it was named Gramophone Recording of the Month, received five stars from The Times and won the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Gramophone praised Soller and capella sollertia as “unceasing advocates for an oeuvre that has, until now, remarkably escaped our attention”, while The Times described the set as a “treasure chest of delights”. Soller has also performed this repertoire with capella sollertia at the Bachfest Leipzig, in a programme bringing together the music of Johann Ludwig and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Critical acclaim for Soller’s work has highlighted both the detail of her interpretations and their dramatic impact. Reviewing Bach’s St Matthew Passion, concerti praised her “unprecedented orchestral nuances, vocal colour and dynamic differentiation” and “the miracle of intensification through restraint”. Her performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah at the Basilica of Ottobeuren was described by the Allgäuer Zeitung as a “world-class performance” and “a pioneering performance in every detail”.
An accomplished continuo player, she has performed with ensembles including the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and Vox Luminis, and regularly directs from the harpsichord or organ. Her experience at the keyboard and understanding of musical rhetoric remain fundamental to her work as a conductor.
Soller studied harpsichord and historical performance practice with Christine Schornsheim alongside conducting, church music and organ at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, where she subsequently taught from 2018 to 2026. She is a prizewinner of the Prague Spring International Music Competition and has received the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize and the Eugen Jochum Prize for Conductors. She has also led projects and masterclasses at institutions including the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Conservatoire de Paris and the Juilliard School in New York.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
Netherlands Bach Society - The Beauty of the Difference
(October 2026)
With J. C. Bach's Cantata à 22 Es errose ein Streit, a copy of which Johann Sebastian possessed, Soller chose the most powerful chord sound painting imaginable; on the one hand, as a dramaturgical basis for word-based themes, and on the other hand, as an equally festive opening. One that absolutely struck a dramatic nerve with the battle retrospective between Michael and the infernal dragon for heaven's victory, which is also fiery and electrifying, at the same time peace-calmed, with strong affect, dynamic contrasts of gripping strings, trumpets, timpani, continuo and double chorus. And with it the not insignificant expectations, which at the end of the concert confirmed that the Netherlands Bach Society would reach new heights with its chief conductor. *****
Bachtrack
JC Bach Zanaida, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Potsdamer Winteroper
(February 2026)
The musical crown of the evening belongs to Johanna Söller as the conductor who transformed Johann Christian Bach's score into a highly vibrant, theatrical performance. With the superbly prepared and well-staffed Kammerakademie Potsdam (strings, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, harpsichord), she succeeded in breathing new life and evocation into a beautiful, hitherto completely unknown opera with compelling direction, rhythmically precise edges, and finely detailed instrumental nuances.
Dr. Ingobert Waltenberger, Online Merker
Johanna Soller has audibly inspired the Potsdam Chamber Academy and the vocal ensemble… Soller and the Potsdam Chamber Academy masterfully handled the reverberant acoustics of the Friedenskirche Sanssouci, the venue for this opera, given its intricately crafted music. Johann Christian Bach's music comes across with a wild energy, strong gestures, and powerful contours. The wind instruments are crisply emphasized, and the harmonic shifts and structural changes are underscored. The music's inherent richness shines through. At the same time, a sensitive interaction between the orchestra and singers is achieved.
Ecki Ramón Weber, concerti.de
The conductor, with the Kammerakademie Potsdam, was Johanna Soller, a specialist in historically informed performance. She judger the opera’s balance of contrasts impeccably and supported the singers with sensitivity, making an eloquent advocate for the ‘London Bach’.
Bernd Hoppe, Opera magazine
CD: Johann Ludwig Bach: The Leipzig Cantatas, Capella Sollertia
Ricercar RIC482 (January 2026)
It’s not every day that a classical recording company produces something that could be designated a boon to civilisation. But I’m tempted to paste that label onto Ricercar’s four-disc presentation of the 18 surviving church cantatas of Bach — Johann Ludwig Bach, that is, distant cousin of the great Johann Sebastian — and music never recorded in bulk before. The box offers a treasure chest of delights, dispatched with scrupulous care and tremendous vim by Johanna Soller’s Capella Sollertia… The performers’ enjoyment of Ludwig’s music is palpable and discovering these 18 cantatas has given me five of the happiest hours of my listening life. Civilisation, take note.
Geoff Brown, The Times*****
So many delights in these recordings from Johanna Soller and her Capella Sollertia. The first of the 4 CDs delivers us two contrasting cantatas that sold me the whole set, nothing that followed let me down.
Andrew McGregor, Record Review BBC R3
Johanna Soller and Capella Sollertia engage unerringly with this extensive project… unceasing advocates for an oeuvre that has, until now, remarkably escaped our attention… The spirit of warmth and affection is especially evident when voices and orchestra dance around each other with their light, genial aplomb under Soller’s impressive direction.
Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Gramophone (Recording of the Month)
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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