Alexander Soddy

Conductor
British conductor Alexander Soddy ranks among the most sought-after conductors of his generation, and is regularly engaged by top orchestras and opera houses around the world. In the 2024/25 Season Soddy will debut at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with Salome and return to some of the houses where he has become a regular fixture, including to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden with Fidelio; the Berlin State Opera with Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Il Trovatore and Kurtag’s Fin de Partie; the Metropolitan Opera with Aida and La Bohème; and for the first time in a number of years to the Hamburg State Opera with Salome. Concert engagements this season will see him debut with the Orchestra Sinfoncia di Milano and return to the Netherlands Philharmonic and the Bournemouth Symphony.
Some of the highlights of Soddy’s recent season include premiering Kirill Serebrennikov's new production of Lohengrin at the Opéra national de Paris, returning to Londons’ Philharmonia for a concert performance of Strauss’ Capriccio at the Edinburgh International Festival, and making his Concertgebouw debut conducting the Netherlands Philharmonic in Mahler’s 5th Symphony.
Soddy is a regular guest at the leading German-speaking opera houses having led at Vienna State Opera a wide ranging repertoire including Vienna premiere of Alexander Raskatov’s Animal Farm but also such diverse repertoire as Otello, Elektra, Hänsel und Gretel, Carmen, Die Zauberflöte, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Salome, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Parsifal, and at the Staatsoper unter den Linden Lohengrin, Der Rosenkavalier, Fidelio, Der Freischütz, La Bohème, and Die Zauberflöte. In the Anglosphere, Soddy has conducted the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, he has conducted Così fan tutte, Tannhäuser and Salome at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, as well as La Bohème and Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera. A sampling of Soddy's other acclaimed performances include Elektra at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Die Zauberflöte and La Bohème at the Bavarian State Opera, and La Traviata at Tokyo Nikikai Opera Theatre, Der Freischütz at Dresden’s Semperoper, La Bohème and Madama Butterfly at the Royal Swedish Opera, and a pairing of works by Arnold Schönberg and Frank Martin at the Oper Frankfurt.
Also a highly esteemed guest on the symphonic podium, Soddy has led concerts in recent seasons with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, London’s Philharmonia, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Royal Swedish Orchestra, the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra, the Orquestra de Valencia, the Oregon Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, and the Bournemouth Symphony.
From 2016 to 2022, Soddy served as General Music Director of the National Theatre Mannheim, where he focused on the core repertoire of German and Italian opera. At the same time he was Artistic Director of Mannheim’s symphonic series, the Akademiekonzerten, where he made the work of Anton Bruckner and other great romantic composers central to his programming. Earlier in his career, he served as Chief Conductor at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt from 2013 to 2016 and as Kapellmeister at the Hamburg State Opera from 2010 to 2012.
Born in Oxford, Soddy received his education at the Royal Academy of Music, the University of Cambridge, and the National Opera Studio in London.

Daishin Kashimoto

Violin
Both as the soloist of international orchestras and as a sought-after chamber musician, Daishin Kashimoto is a regular guest of major concert halls around the globe. The tremendous wealth of experience gained in over 15 years as first concert master of the Berliner Philharmoniker benefits him in his equally adept role as a soloist, where he plays a wide repertoire ranging from classical to new music.
Recently, Daishin Kashimoto performed Bruch’s Violin Concerto with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fabio Luisi and appeared with the City of Birmingham Orchestra under the baton of Kazuki Yamada, the Gürzenich Orchestra under the direction of François-Xavier Roth as well as the NDR Radio Philharmonic conducted by Thomas Søndergård. A highlight of 2023 is the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s new violin concerto Prayer with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Paavo Järvi at the Philharmonie Berlin, followed by the Swiss premiere at the KKL Luzern with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and the Asian premiere at the Suntory Hall with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. The new season also sees the start of his residency as soloist with the Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester Mannheim.
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 Festival and Lucerne Festival, 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, 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. He plays on a del Gesu 1744 “de Beriot” kindly loaned by Crystco, Inc. and its chairman Mr. Hikaru Shimura.