“At my first concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker I was terribly nervous, but as soon as the music started and the musicians became a unit, my nervousness disappeared and gave way to the sensation of being part of something special. Making music at the highest level like this simply gives me satisfaction and a certain feeling of being emotionally complete. It is a huge honour for me to be a part of this outstanding orchestra. I see my job as concertmaster as one of coordinating and conveying the communication within the orchestra and, especially, between the conductor/soloist and the orchestra.”
When he was three years old, his parents gave him an array of toy instruments: piano, clarinet, flute etc. But the one Daishin Kashimoto liked best was the violin, because it gave him two different “toys” – violin and bow – to use at the same time. And so it also became “his” instrument, on which he had his first lessons from Kumiko Etoh in Tokyo. In 1986 he went to the Juilliard School of Music in New York as a young student in the Pre-College Division; in 1990 – first in the preparatory school, then as a full student – he moved to the Lübeck Musikhochschule. From 1999 to 2004 he was a pupil of Rainer Kussmaul at the Freiburg Musikhochschule.
Daishin Kashimoto, who grew up in Japan, Germany and the USA, has already appeared as a soloist with many international orchestras, including the Boston Symphony, the Orchestre Nationale de France, the Bavarian and Frankfurt Radio Symphony orchestras, the Dresden Staatskapelle and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. When his musical activities allow him time, the violinist enjoys cooking. He is also a great sports fan, especially of baseball.
