Lea Suter
Organist & Harpsichordist
The Swiss-born organist, harpsichordist and organ builder Lea Suter discovered her passion for the music of J.S. Bach – particularly his keyboard music – at a young age. After building her first clavichord at the age of sixteen, she trained as a professional organ builder. As part of her training, she helped restore 17th- and 18th-century church organs in Transylvania (Romania), which inspired her to complete an undergraduate degree in church music and a master’s degree in organ, harpsichord and clavichord. Her teachers include Margareta Hürholz, Roland Dopfer, Pieter van Dijk and Menno van Delft.
In 2025, together with her duo partner Juan Gonzalez Martinez, she won the International H.I.F. Biber Competition in St. Florian, Austria.
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Performing and Teaching
Since completing her studies, she has performed internationally as a soloist, regularly as a church organist on the meantone Van der Putten organ in Bremen, and as the artistic director of the weekly “Worpsweder Orgelmusiken” in the artists’ village of Worpswede. In addition, she has been a tutor at the Smarano International Academy for organ and clavichord (Italy) from 2017 to 2023 and shared her enthusiasm for historical keyboard instruments as a lecturer at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague as well as on “sounding tours” of the instrument collection at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg.
She is also internationally recognised as an academic specialist in the practical application of historical temperaments, a subject which she first addressed in her bachelor’s thesis.
Lea‘s playing is not only influenced by her comprehensive examination of historical sources and her practical knowledge of instruments as a performer, but also unquestionably by her knowledge of instrument making. Accordingly, her work alternates between making music and conducting research on and with historical instruments, sources and traditions.
Continuo and Ensemble Harpsichordist
Alongside her solo activity, Lea Suter works as a harpsichordist with the ensemble Concierto Ibérico and in 2020 she founded the Weckmann-Consort, an ensemble with which she performs primarily works by North and Central German composers of the 17th and 18th centuries on multi-manual historic organs. She regards historical instruments as essential reference points in order to come as close as possible to the sound a composer of past eras may have had in mind. She released her solo debut album in 2025 on a clavichord built after Jacob Adlung by Joris Potvlieghe on the Dabringhaus & Grimm label.
