Daishin Kashimoto

Daishin Kashimoto (born 1979 in London, United Kingdom) is a Japanese classical violinist.

He began studying violin in Tokyo, Japan, at the age of three. He moved to New York and was accepted at the age of seven by the pre-college division of Juilliard School as its youngest student and received the Edward John Noble Foundation Scholarship. He then moved to Lübeck, Germany, to study with Prof. Zakhar Bron at the Luebeck Musikhochschule. He continued his studies with Prof. Rainer Kussmaul, former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany, from which he graduated in 2005.

Daishin gave his first recital in 1988, and in the same year he made his first appearance as a soloist with the New York Symphonic Ensemble. Since then, he has given recitals and solo appearances in major cities of USA, the Far East and in many European countries. He has performed with many internationally renowned orchestras, including the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Radio Symphony Orchestras of Cologne, Frankfurt and Moscow, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Czech Philharmonic, Bamberger Symphoniker, Vienna and Berlin Symphony Orchestras, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony, under the baton of such conductors as Mariss Jansons, Semyon Bychkov, Michel Plasson, Vladimir Fedosseyev, Hugh Wolff, Evgeny Svetlanov, Yehudi Menuhin, Marek Janowski, Heinz Holliger, Seiji Ozawa, Lorin Maazel, Heinrich Schiff, Charles Dutoit, Jiri Kout, Myung-Whun Chung and Yury Temirkanov.

Since 2009, he has been the first concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

He has regularly performed with such artists as Yury Bashmet, Konstantin Lifshitz, Myung-Whun Chung, Itamar Golan, Claudio Bohórquez, Yefim Bronfman, Shlomo Mintz, Tabea Zimmermann, Paul Meyer, Antoine Tamestit, Jian Wang, Eric Le Sage, Misha Maisky, Jing Zhao, and many others.

Daishin is the first prize winner of such renowned competitions as the 6th Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists in England in 1993, the International Competition for Violinists Cologne 1994, and, in 1996, as the youngest winner in history of both the International Fritz Kreisler Competition in Vienna and the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition in Paris. In 1994, Daishin was awarded the Steigenberger Prize and the Davidoff Prize, as well as the Brahms Prize in 1999 in Germany.

In 1999 Daishin Kashimoto signed a worldwide recording contract with Sony Classical and has released sonata CDs with Itamar Golan and the Brahms concerto CD with the Dresdner Staatskapelle and Myung-Whun Chung.^[1]

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