Kazunori Seo

Born in 1974 in Kitakyushu within Japan's Fukuoka prefecture, flutist Kazunori Seo has built an international profile as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. He performs regularly in his native country, in France—site of the greater part of his training—and in New York. On disc Seo has specialized in Classical and early Romantic flute literature; his chamber reductions of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies have also met with notable success in Japan. His parents, both professional musicians, recognized his exceptional ability and introduced him to the flute when he was six. He later moved to France to enroll at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMDP), where he studied flute and chamber music with a series of teachers before receiving the Premier Prix in flute in 1998 and in chamber music in 1999. He completed his studies with Maurice Bourgue. In the late 1990s and early 2000s Seo accumulated major competition victories, including the Jean-Pierre Rampal and Carl Nielsen Prizes in 1998 and the Pro Musicis International Award in 2005; these honors led to representation by the Pro Musicis agency and the start of an international touring career. Recital appearances have taken him to the Salle Cortot in Paris, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, and multiple venues in Tokyo. As soloist he has appeared with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Odense Symphony Orchestra, and the Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia across Asia, Europe, and North America. Chamber-music collaborators include flutist Patrick Gallois and pianist Jörg Demus. Since 2001 his Naxos recordings have concentrated on little-known flute works of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, among them pieces by Ignaz Moscheles, Leopold Hofmann, and Carl Czerny. With Gallois he has also recorded the Concerto for two flutes and orchestra jointly composed by the nineteenth-century German-Ukrainian flutist-composers Franz and Karl Doppler. In 2019 the same duo released an album of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach flute duets.