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 cantatas of Johann Ludwig Bach with capella sollertia, the ensemble she founded, won the Gramophone Classical Music Arward and the Jahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

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, Bachstiftung St Gallen, Dunedin Consort and Munich Symphony Orchestra. From 2023 to 2026, she 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 Mozart’s Così fan tutte 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 Leipzig cantatas of Johann Ludwig Bach was the first complete recording of the works and brought this remarkable body of music to new international attention. It won the Gramophone Classical Music Award and the Jahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, named Gramophone Recording of the Month and received five stars from The Times. 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 will also lead projects and masterclasses at institutions including the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Conservatoire de Paris and the Juilliard School in New York.