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 decadelong role as first concert master of the Berliner Philharmoniker, this tremendous wealth of experience also benefits him in his equally adept role as a soloist, where he plays a wide repertoire ranging from classical to new music.

After his performances last season of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Semyon Bychkov’s direction, as well as with Amihai Grosz playing Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Vedernikov, further performances with orchestras are slated for 2020/21: in December 2020, he will perform Beethoven's Violin Concerto with the Bergische Symphoniker, and in March 2021 will play Brahms' Double Concerto together with cellist Claudio Bohórquez at the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, conducted by Nabil Shehata. In May 2021 the duo will also embark on a tour of Asia with pianist Alessio Bax, which will take them to Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao, Taipei, and other cities.

Daishin Kashimoto has appeared with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, the Bavarian, Hessian, and West German Radio Symphony Orchestras, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra under conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Seiji Ozawa, Lorin Maazel, Yehudi Menuhin, Paavo Järvi, Myung-Whun Chung, Daniel Harding, and Philippe Jordan. He can also be heard as a soloist in concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Past engagements include Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante at the Grafenegg and Lucerne Festivals, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle, and Tchaikovsky's Sérénade Mélancolique and Valse Scherzo at Berlin's Waldbühne.

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 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.

2020/2021 season

This biography is to be reproduced without any changes, omissions or additions, unless expressly authorised by the artist management.

[ ...] 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