Mayu Kishima is a Japanese violinist born (in Kobe,
Japan) on December 13, 1986. She is
known for having won one of the largest (if not the largest) monetary prizes in
a violin competition – the Isaac Stern Violin Competition in Shanghai awarded
her a first prize of $100,000 in 2016.
That was a competition that she almost decided not to enter until the
last minute. Kishima began her violin
studies in Tokyo at age 3 and has had quite a number of teachers during her
career, including Izumi Hayashi, Kazuyo Togami,
Toshiya Eto, Dorothy DeLay, Masao Kawasaki, Machi Oguri, Chihiro Kudo,
and Zakhar Bron (with whom she began studying at age 13.) She graduated from the Advanced School for
Music in Cologne in 2012. She was 26
years old. By then however, she had
already established herself as a concert artist, having begun her professional
career in the year 2000 at age 14. Kishima
made her first studio recording in 2003 with the NHK Symphony. Needless to say, she has played all over the
world with some of the finest orchestras and conductors. Among the violins she has played are a 1779
G.B. Guadagnini and a Stradivarius from 1700.
Here is one of many YouTube videos posted of her performances. Here is another.
Sayaka
Shoji is a Japanese violinist born (in Tokyo) on January 30, 1983. She gained considerable attention after
winning the Paganini Violin Competition at age 16 (in 1999), the youngest competitor
to ever do so and the first Japanese violinist to win the gold medal at that
competition as well. Although she spent
her very early childhood in Italy, she began her violin studies in Japan, at
age 5. Among her first teachers (in
Tokyo) were Kazuko Yatani and Reiko Kaminishi.
At 15, she moved to Germany for further study. At 21, she graduated from the Advanced School
for Music in Cologne where her main teacher was Zakhar Bron, although she also
studied with Uto Ughi and Shlomo Mintz, among others. (Bron’s other famous pupils have been Maxim
Vengerov, Daniel Hope, Mayuko Kamio, and Vadim Repin.) Needless to say, Shoji has performed with
every major orchestra and most of the world’s illustrious conductors. Her first appearance with the Berlin
Philharmonic was at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 2002, playing Bruch’s first
concerto. Mariss Jansons was on the
podium. She first appeared with the New
York Philharmonic on October 7, 2004 playing the first Prokofiev concerto under
the baton of the late Lorin Maazel. She
was 21 years old. Her repertoire
includes three works seldom heard in concert: the Schumann, the Mendelssohn (in
d minor), and the Max Reger concertos. As
far as I know, Shoji has already recorded the Reger concerto but not yet the
Schumann or Mendelssohn’s first concerto.
Typical reviews from informed, respected, and experienced music critics read
as follows:”…virtuosity of the highest order, …infused with poetry, …passionate,
free, with an emotional intensity that many violinists will never achieve.” Her spectacular rendition of the Brahms
concerto can be seen and heard here. In my
opinion, the only performance which rivals it is the Heifetz rendition, and
that, for me, is saying a lot. Shoji
mostly records for the Deutsche Grammophon label. Volume 4 of her recording of all (10)
Beethoven violin sonatas will be released in 2015. Her violin is the Recamier Stradivarius from
1729. Shoji’s photo (used here, slightly
modified) is courtesy of Nikolaj Lund, well-known European photographer of
classical musicians and classical music subjects.
Akiko
Suwanai is a Japanese violinist and teacher born (in Tokyo) on February 7,
1972. Suwanai won the Tchaikovsky violin
competition at age 18 (1990) and is well-known for playing one of Heifetz’ old
violins, the Dolphin Stradivarius of 1714. She initially studied in Tokyo with Toshiya
Eto. Eventually she moved to the U.S
where she studied with Dorothy DeLay and Cho Liang Lin at Juilliard. Then she moved to Berlin to study with Uwe
Martin Haiberg at the Advanced School of Art (the University of Art.) Suwanai has since solidly established her
career, gaining praise from critics and audiences throughout the world. She frequently tours with top orchestras, but
mostly in Europe. She soloed with the
New York Philharmonic on November 20, 1997, playing the Mendelssohn concerto –
the one in e minor. Suwanai first
performed with the Berlin Philharmonic on September 12, 2000, playing Ravel’s
Tzigane. She was 28 years old. Charles Dutoit was on the podium. She opened the Shanghai Spring International
Music Festival in 2009, being the first Japanese violinist invited to do
so. She has recorded with the Academy of
St Martin in the Fields, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Chamber Orchestra
of Europe, among others. Suwanai also
teaches master classes occasionally. As
far as I know, Suwanai presently has her home base in Paris. Paris, New York, Berlin, Rome, and London are
probably the most popular cities for concert violinists to work from. Here is a YouTube video of her playing (in
the orchestra) with a few other musicians at the Louvre. And another is here at the same concert,
playing the double concerto by Bach.
Among her collaborators at the concert are Manrico Padovani, Sergey
Khachatryan, Viviane Hagner, Hyun-su Shin, Manuela Janke, Steven Isserlis, and
Arabella Steinbacher. There are many
other videos of Suwanai in concert on YouTube.
The photo is courtesy of Leslie Kee.
Mayuko Kamio is a Japanese violinist born (in Toyonaka, Osaka) on June
12, 1986. She has been fortunate to have
played with well-known, established artists from an early age. When she was barely out of her teens, one of
the critics for the New York Times described her as being “distinguished by her
warmly luxurious, buttery tone and long, seamless phrasing.” In Japan, she has played in every major venue
and appeared with practically every orchestra.
She has also appeared in every major city in Europe. In the U.S., her activity has been more
limited, but no less successful. She has
also been (in 2003) the subject of a documentary by Josh Aronson, the director
of the recent film about Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman – Orchestra of
Exiles. The film is the last film in
which Isaac Stern appears. Kamio’s
record labels are SONY-BMG and RCA. In
1999, she won a major competition in England – the Menuhin competition. She was 13 years old. In 2000, she won a major competition in the
U.S. In 2004, Kamio took first prize in
another competition in Monte Carlo. In
2007, she won the best-known violin competition in the world – the
Tchaikovsky. She was 21 years old. Kamio began to study violin when she was 4
years old. Her teachers were Chikako
Satoya and Chihiro Kudo, among others.
At age ten (1996), she made her debut with orchestra in Tokyo. The concert was broadcast on TV and Charles
Dutoit was on the podium. Later on, in
the U.S., beginning at age 14, she studied with Masao Kawasaki and Dorothy
DeLay. After that, she studied further
in Europe with one of the best teachers currently still teaching – Zakhar Bron
– at the Advanced School for Music and Theatre in Switzerland. She received her artist’s diploma from that
school but I know not in what year – it may have been 2007. By then, she had already made her New York
recital debut (in 2003.) Kamio has
played a 1727 (nameless, run-of-the-mill) Stradivarius and more recently, the
Sennhauser Guarnerius (del Gesu) from 1735.
You can see and hear Kamio – at age 18 - perform the last section of the
famous Mendelssohn concerto in this YouTube video. In this other one, you can hear a PaganiniCaprice – number 13.
Midori (Midori Goto) is a Japanese (some would say American) violinist, teacher, and writer, born on October 25, 1971 (Perlman was 25 years old.) She began violin lessons with her mother at age three. Her first public performance took place at age seven. After she and her mother came to the U.S. (1982), she began studying at Juilliard with Dorothy Delay. Her New York debut took place with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta that same year. She has been concertizing ever since. YouTube features a popular home video of her performance at Tanglewood (1986) when her E string broke twice while she played. In 2000, she graduated from New York University, having earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and again in 2005 a Master’s Degree in the same field from the same school. Nowadays, Midori spends a lot of time teaching - she has founded several educational programs for children. She has also taught at USC (Los Angeles - Heifetz used to teach there) and the Manhattan School of Music, among other schools, and is the recipient of several prestigious awards. However, her discography is not extensive and she has yet to record (or release) the Beethoven and the Brahms concertos, two war horses of the violin repertory. She wrote a memoir (Simply Midori) which was published in 2004. She has played (and perhaps still plays) the famous 1734 Huberman Guarnerius. A wonderful CD and DVD of her Carnegie Hall recital (1990) are still available. Here is a sample from the DVD posted on YouTube.
Shinichi Suzuki was a Japanese violinist and teacher born on October 17, 1898 (Stravinsky was 16 years old.) He is remembered for having invented the popular Suzuki Method of music education. He did not have formal instruction at the beginning, however, he taught himself to play by listening to records and imitating what he heard. Suzuki began this course of self-instruction at age 17. He was never a concert violinist or a soloist but he did play with a string quartet for a while. At age 22, he traveled to Germany where he studied with Karl Klingler. When he returned to Japan, he taught at the Imperial School of Music in Tokyo. From teaching many children in the countryside, he developed his teaching methods in the 1940s. He often referred to his methodology as talent education. Critics of the Suzuki method have said that pupils who learn through it never learn how to read music well since they become accustomed to playing by ear. Shinichi Suzuki died at his home in Matsumoto, Japan on January 26, 1998, at age 99. As far as I know, only Otto Joachim lived as long.
