In the 1970s and 1980s quite a lot of people from Japan studied in Europe — particularly in Holland, Britain, and Basle, and then returned to Japan. That made the late 1980s a good time to start new ensembles, even though the financial difficulties of the early 1990s meant that many things had to stop. Many of those people have retained a close connection with the European early music scene. My brother Hidemi Suzuki is a good example. He’s now back in Japan, but for a while taught at the Brussels Conservatoire.

When you graduated from Tokyo University it was with degrees in performance and in composition. What part does composition play in your musical life?

I originally wanted to study organ, but was encouraged to study composition as well. That gave me a good understanding of harmony, polyphony and construction and proved a very good experience for helping me to understand music.

After Tokyo you went to study with Ton Koopman. What was that like?

Ton was a very active musician at the time, and talked a great deal about his ideas of performance. This was very stimulating. He was embarrassed if pupils played things in the same way as him. I learnt a lot about music, and about how to live as a musician — at the time (1978–83) his daughters were quite small so he was juggling music and child-care. He lived in a street near the Central Station in Amsterdam, with a market in the street outside on Fridays and Saturdays, so it was like walking into one of those Rembrandt paintings depicting life in seventeenth-century Holland.

What did you do after studying with him?

After that I studied with the organist Piet Kee for another two years before returning to Japan. He’s also a very good teacher, and, among other things, he taught me how to handle the large Dutch organs. His musical ideas are very different from those of Ton Koopman, so it was good to study with both. At the end of those two years I entered the organ competition at the Bruges and was worried when I discovered that Ton Koopman was one of the judges because, by that time, my playing was very influenced by Piet Kee. To my surprise, Ton Koopman liked what I did, and I won a prize.

Back in Japan, what led you to set up the Bach Collegium Japan?

Soon after my return, I had the chance to start a concert series in the chapel at Kobe, which we still use for many concerts and recordings. The chapel was so good that I couldn’t stop making music there, and founded a small choral ensemble. I also set up a small choir in Tokyo. For the Bach tercentenary in 1985 we organised some concerts, and it seemed natural to bring the two ensembles together. With musicians from different parts of the country joining forces to perform Bach, the name Bach Collegium Japan seemed natural.

It turns out that the initials “BCJ” make 14 according to the numerology Bach used, which is the same as “BACH”. Last night I realised that the initials of the Academy of Ancient Music, “AAM” also make 14, which is an amazing coincidence.