Daishin Kashimoto

Violinist Daishin Kashimoto advanced from early prodigy status to one of the orchestra world’s most prominent posts, assuming the concertmaster chair of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra at age 30. In addition to those responsibilities, he has appeared as soloist with leading ensembles internationally and in chamber settings alongside numerous distinguished colleagues, while steadily enlarging his recorded catalog. Listeners encountered him in 2024 on the release Ernest Chausson: Concert pour piano, violon et quatuor; Louis Vierne: Quintette pour piano et cordes.

Born in London on March 27, 1979, Kashimoto gravitated toward the violin among the toy instruments supplied by his parents and began lessons at three in Tokyo under Kumiko Etoh. Seven years old in 1986, he became the youngest musician then admitted to Juilliard’s pre-college division. During that period he presented his debut solo recital and performed with the New York Symphonic Ensemble. Subsequent training took him to Zakhar Bron in Lübeck and Rainer Kussmaul in Freiburg, and he collected several competition prizes across the 1990s. His first commercial recording appeared in 1995 on the Ars Musici label, featuring Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, with the Orchestra of the Cologne University of Music led by Marc Kissóczy.

Kashimoto joined the Sony Classical roster in 1999 and issued the album Passionata with pianist Itamar Golan in 2002. He returned in 2007 with Myung-Whun Chung and the Dresden Staatskapelle to record Brahms’ Violin Concerto. That same year he was named artistic director of Japan’s Le Pont Music Festival in Ako and Himeji, a post he retained into the mid-2020s. In 2009 the Berlin Philharmonic appointed him concertmaster, the role previously occupied by Kussmaul. Kashimoto has since performed as soloist with such orchestras as the Vienna, Boston, and NHK Symphonies and the Czech Philharmonic. Chamber collaborations have linked him with Mischa Maisky, Shlomo Mintz, and Tabea Zimmermann, among many others.

Warner Classics released his complete Beethoven sonata cycle with Konstantin Lifschitz in 2014. In 2020 he participated in the Alpha label recording Vienne 1900. While continuing his concertmaster duties, Kashimoto gave the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s violin concerto Prayer with the Berlin Philharmonic under Paavo Järvi in 2023, followed by the Swiss and Asian premieres with the Lucerne Symphony and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestras. The next year he joined pianist Éric le Sage and the Schumann Quartett for a Sony Classical account of Ernest Chausson’s Concert for violin, piano, and string quartet, Op. 21.