Daishin Kashimoto

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

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 under direction of Andris Nelsons.

As a chamber musician Daishin Kashimoto has appeared alongside Martha Argerich, Yuja Wang, Leif Ove Andsnes, Éric Le Sage, Alessio Bax, Emmanuel Pahud, Itamar Golan, Tabea Zimmermann, Yefim Bronfman, Claudio Bohórquez and Konstantin Lifschitz, among others. 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. Daishin Kashimoto plays on a Guarneri del Gesu 1744「de Beriot」violin kindly loaned by Asuka Corporation and its chairman Mr. Hikaru Shimura.