Johannes Leertouwer has been played on NTS in shows including Kit Records, featured first on 16 September 2018. Songs played include Grande Fanfare - Rendez Vous De Chasse.

Johannes Leertouwer was born in the Dutch city of Groningen and began playing the violin at an early age. A graduate of the Sweelink Conservatory of Amsterdam as a student Bouw Lemkes, he took part in the Oscar Back Violin Competition of 1983 and was awarded the Elisabeth Back Prize as well as the Buma Award for the best performance of the obligatory contemporary work. This enabled him to continue his studies with Josef Suk in Vienna and Prague.

After his studies he concentrated on performance practice with historic instruments. He has worked with some of the most important ensembles in this field as a leader/concertmaster or as a soloist: Il Seminario Musicale (Gerard Lesne, Paris), Al Ayre Espagnol (Lopes Banzo, Madrid), the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Ton Koopman), the Orchestra of the Nederlandse Bach Vereniging (Jos van Veldhoven) and the Orchestra Anima Eterna (Jos van Immerseel, Antwerp).

He has recorded a number of CD’s for the Dutch label Globe, including the complete sonatas of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. As a founding member of the Schönbrunn Ensemble, specializing in performing chamber music on period instruments, he performs both nationally and internationally a repertory ranging from Frescobaldi to Debussy. In the year 2000 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the death of J.S. Bach, he performed the complete sonatas and partitas at historic venues in the Netherlands. At the Holland Festival of Early Music 2002 he performed the complete works for violin and piano of Beethoven with his duo-partner Julian Reynolds. As a violin soloist he has appeared with The Osaka Symphoniker (Haydn and Mozart) and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra (Telemann and Vivaldi). In the “Mozart year” 2006, his recording of complete Mozart Violin concertos with his own ensemble La Borea, was released by Challenge Records.

Johannes Leertouwer has been a professor of violin at the famous Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam for the past 17 years. His former students are active members of a wide variety of orchestras and ensembles. From 1998 until 2006 he was artistic director and conductor of the Netherlands Youth String Orchestra, where he worked with a selection of the most talented young string players of the Netherlands. Johannes Leertouwer has been a guest conductor and professor at the CNSM of Paris, the Felix Mendelssohn Hochschule in Leipzig and regularly gives master classes in France, Italy, Germany, Israel and the United States of America.

Johannes Leertouwer plays an exceptional violin made by Antonius and Hieronymus Amati in Cremona 1619, and a fine instrument by the Dutch violin maker Willibrord Crijnen after Petrus Guarnerius in Marseille 1996.