Rie Kimura
is a baroque violinist from Japan. She won the 2010 Premio Bonporti Baroque Violin Competition in Italy where she was also awarded the public prize. Her solo violin playing has been praised for it’s ‘strong personality imbued with expression and rhetoric’ (The Strad), whilst her outstanding skills as a chamber musician mean that she is a violinist very much in demand. Alongside Fantasticus, Rie plays regularly with the likes of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Bach Collegium Japan, Apollo Ensemble and De Nederlandse Bachvereniging.

In Japan Rie studied baroque violin with Keiko Watanabe and Paul Hererra. She continued her studies with Lucy van Dael at the Amsterdam Conservatory where she graduated ‘cum laude’. She has won numerous prizes throughout her career including the top prize in the 2008 Yamanashi Early Music Competition (Japan) and various ensemble prizes at the Bruges and Amsterdam Early Music Competitions.

Pieter-Jan Belder (1966) studied recorder with Ricardo Kanji at the Royal Conservatium of The Hague, and harpsichord with Bob van Asperen at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatorium. He has persued a flourishing career as harpsichordist, clavichord player, organist, forte-pianist and recorder player.

He has appeared at many international festivals, such as the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, the Berlin Musikfest, the Festival van Vlaanderen, the Festival Potsdam Sans Souci, Bremen Musikfest and the Leipzig Bachfest.

He regularly plays solo recitals, and is also very much in demand as a continuo player with such ensembles as the, The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Camarata Trajectina, Bach Collegium Japan, Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam, and the Netherlands Bach Society, and has been working with conductors such as Frans Brüggen, Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki, Jos van Veldhoven and Philippe Herreweghe, amongst others. Belder has also accompanied soloists such as Johannette Zomer, Nico van der Meel, Harry van der Kamp, Sigiswald Kuijken, Rémy Baudet and Wilbert Hazelzet. Belder conducts his own ensemble Musica Amphion.

In 1997 Pieter-Jan Belder was awarded the third prize at the Hamburg NDR Music Prize harpsichord competition. In 2000 he was winner of the Leipzig Bach harpsichord competition. In 2005 he made his debut as a conductor in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and was since then regularly conducting productions with soloists such as Michael Chance and Sarah Connolly (Dido & Aeneas) and the choir Collegium Vocale Gent.

He has made over 130 CD recordings, most of them solo and chamber music productions. Since 1999 Belder has worked on his integral recording of the Scarlatti keyboard sonatas, which was released in 2007. Since then he has recorded Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier along with the complete harpsichord works by Rameau and Soler. Recently Brilliant released two volumes with harpsichord music from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and a recording of the Kenner und Liebhaber series by C.P.E. Bach, recorded on the fortepiano and the clavichord.