Daishin Kashimoto

Both as the soloist of an international orchestra and as a sought-after chamber musician, Daishin Kashimoto is a regular guest of major concert halls around the globe. In his decade-plus role as first concert master of the Berliner Philharmoniker, his tremendous wealth of experience also benefits him in his solo role, at which he, with a wide repertoire ranging from classical to new music, is equally adept.

In the current season, he has performed Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic under the direction of Semyon Bychkov, and Mozart's Sinfonia concertante with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Vedernikov. In 2020 he will also perform with Amihai Grosz, Eric Le Sage, and Claudio Bohorquez, on a tour that takes the piano quartet to the Cologne, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, and the Vienna Konzerthaus, among others. With the Berlin Philharmonic Octet, he launched a new work by Toshio Hosokawa at the Berliner Philharmoniker, which will then be toured through Japan. In a duo with pianist Eric Le Sage, another Asian tour then follows and includes stops in Taiwan, Nagoya, and Macau.

Daishin Kashimoto has guested with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Bavarian, Hessian, and West German Radio Symphony Orchestras, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as under conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Seiji Ozawa, Lorin Maazel, Yehudi Menuhin, Paavo Järvi, Myung-Whun Chung, Daniel Harding, and Philippe Jordan. He has also performed as a soloist for the Berliner Philharmoniker, giving concerts such as Mozart's Sinfonia concertante at the Grafenegg and Lucerne festivals in 2015, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in 2014 under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, and Tchaikovsky's Sérénade mélancolique and the Valse Scherzo at the Berlin Waldbühne in 2012.

As a chamber musician Daishin Kashimoto has appeared alongside Martha Argerich, Yuja Wang, Leif Ove Andsnes, Emmanuel Pahud, Itamar Golan, Tabea Zimmermann, Yefim Bronfman, and Konstantin Lifschitz. With Konstantin Lifschitz, he also recorded a highly acclaimed CD of Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas in 2014. His other recordings also include a CD of Brahms’ Violin Concerto with the Staatskapelle Dresden under Myung Whun Chung for Sony Music.

His parents introduced him to various instruments early on, with the three-year-old opting for the violin and receiving his first lessons in Tokyo. After moving to the United States, Daishin Kashimoto was accepted, at the tender age of seven, as the youngest student to ever attend Julliard School's pre-college program; at age eleven he transferred to the Lübeck University of Music under Zakhar Bron, before becoming a student of Rainer Kussmaul at the Freiburg University of Music from 1999 to 2004. He also had great success in major competitions as a teenager, taking first prize at the Menuhin Junior International Competition in 1993, the Cologne Violin Competition in 1994, and in 1996 at the Vienna Fritz Kreisler and the Long-Thibaud Competitions. Daishin Kashimoto has been the artistic director of the Le Pont Music Festival in Ako and Himeji (Japan) since 2007. He plays an Andrea Guarneri violin from 1674.

2019/2020 season

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[ ...] Debussy's last completed work. Astonishingly extroverted and athletic, violinist Daishin Kashimoto and Yuja Wang now approach this work together.
Berliner Morgenpost, Felix Stephan, 12/4/2018

That he is brilliant, dreamily confident and a daredevil was already apparent when Daishin Kashimoto completed his master studies in Freiburg with Rainer Kussmaul [...]. The remarkable thing about this likeable violinist: he has retained his youthful freshness and his willingness to take risks.
Badische Zeitung, Alexander Dick, June 2015

It is often visible that all too regularly, good to great interpreters impose their own sound quality on Beethoven, demonstrating their own skills of delicacy, cantabile and agile. What Kashimoto and Lifschitz bring to the ear in closely interwoven dialogues is truly pure Beethoven, in its unruliness and seemingly spontaneous non-conformity - not arbitrary, but a score taken literally.
Der Tagesspiegel, Isabel Herzfeld, 23/5/2014