Mayuko Kamio

Japanese violinist Mayuko Kamio*, the gold medalist of the 2007 International Tchaikovsky Competition, is widely praised for her luxurious silken tone, long expressive phrasing and virtuoso techniques. The New York Times has called Ms. Kamio an “exciting young musician” and “a radiant talent.” Ms. Kamio made her concerto debut in Tokyo at the age of ten under the baton of Charles Dutoit, in a concert broadcast on NHK television. Since then, she has appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops conducted by Keith Lockhart, the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich with Mstislav Rostropovich, and the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Recent engagement highlights include a return to the Vancouver Symphony and performances with the Tokyo Symphony, Osaka Philharmonic, Kanagawa Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, and the Saratov Philharmonic.

Kamio’s previous seasons included guest appearances with the Brevard Music Festival, Huntsville Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Nihon Philharmonic, Symphony Silicon Valley, Seattle Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, as well as recitals with Chamber Music San Francisco, Chamber on the Mountain, and at Merkin Hall in New York City. She has toured with the National Philharmonic of Russia conducted by Vladimir Spivakov, the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer, the Munich Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, the Prague Philharmonic, the BBC Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, and the Oviedo Symphony Orchestra of Spain. She has appeared in Japan as soloist with the Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, NHK, Osaka, Sapporo and Yomiuri Nippon symphony orchestras; and the Japan, Tokyo and Tokyo City philharmonics. She has toured with the Israel Philharmonic under Ludovic Morlot, in South America with the Munich Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, and in Japan with the German SWR Symphony Orchestra under François-Xavier Roth. Other orchestral highlights include appearances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Jiri Belohlavek, the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer, NHK Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Israel Philharmonic under Yaron Traub, and the Calgary and the Colorado Springs philharmonics. Her international career as a recitalist has taken her to New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Frankfurt, Warsaw, and Tokyo.

The youngest artist ever to win the Menuhin International Violin Competition, Ms. Kamio performed with the Orchestra National de Lille, with Menuhin conducting. She was awarded first prize in the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and received the first Monte Carlo Violin Masters Competition medal. She also garnered the gold medal at the first International David Oistrakh Violin Competition in Ukraine. She has released four recordings on the SONY and BMG labels, a sonata recording of Franck, Brahms and Strauss, a concerto recording of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev Concerti, a collection of violin solo works with piano of Chausson, Stravinsky, Szymanowski, Waxman and Paganini’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin.

Ms. Kamio was born in Osaka, Japan and began to play the violin at the age of four. Her early teachers were Chikako Satoya, Machie Oguri and Chihiro Kudo, and she worked with Koichiro Harada at the Toho Gakuen School of Music. She studied in the U.S. with Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki at the Aspen Music Festival and in the pre-college division of The Juilliard School. She completed artist’s diploma studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Zurich, where she worked with Zakhar Bron. Ms. Kamio received a grant from the Bagby Foundation for the Musical Arts, and is a recipient of the prestigious Idemitsu Music Award. Mayuko Kamio plays on the 1731 “Rubinoff” made by Antonio Stradivari, kindly offered by the Munetsugu collection in Tokyo.

*[pronounced My-YOU-ko KA-me-o]

January 13, 2023: Japan Philharmonic & Suntory Hall Nijikura Talk and smiles, a new series to enjoy music and weekday matinees start
- Suntory

October 19, 2018: Mayuko Kamino Performs Barber’s Violin Concerto With Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
- Oregon Artswatch

October 22, 2014: Mayuko Kamio Releases Album, “Apres un reve & Salut d'amour - Violin Encores”
- Apple Music

2007: Mayuko Kamino Wins Gold Medal at the Interrnational Tchaikovsky Competition
- The Washington Post

VANCOUVER SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA & NICOLE BUETTI: KEEPING ORCHESTRA MUSIC ALIVE
Japanese violinist Mayuko Kamio started up Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto with a quiet, delicate opening, supported by rich horns (I dare say this section might be better than Oregon Symphony’s). The second movement, another lovely oboe solo answered by sweet cellos and a high clean violin section. Kamio’s line turns tragic, light and bittersweet, a vigorous vibrato, molto schmaltzando, as muted trumpets echo mysteriously in the distance. As the last movement’s virtuosic perpetuo moto got underway Kamio began to really pick up steam, full orchestra punctuating her hoedown grooving, Florian Conzetti bending way over his timpani to play a quick snare drum flourish, Brotons’s legs braced wide for the big ending, a hop and a sting and it was over.
– Matthew Neil Andrews, Oregon Artswatch

CONDUCTOR MEI-ANN CHEN ELICITS IMPRESSIVE WORK FROM SYMPHONY SILICON VALLEY
Kamio’s awesome talents as shown in the concerto: her boldness of command, sureness in rhythm and phrasing, richness of harmony in double-stops, and sheer strength. Her vibrato, though not consistently applied, is extremely wide. The concerto, already a long work, seemed absolutely epic in scale but it never dragged. Kamio blazed her trail through it impressively.
– David Bratman, San Francisco Classical Voice

KAMIO EXCELS IN TCHAIKOVSKY’S VIOLIN CONCERTO WITH VANCOUVER SYMPHONY
Mayuko Kamio may be diminutive in stature, but she knows how to create a big, beautiful sound. The young Japanese virtuoso (age 30) delivered an immaculate performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto on Saturday afternoon (October 1) to open the Vancouver Symphony’s 38th season. Her playing riveted a large audience at Skyview Concert Hall in an all-Russian program that featured Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathétique”) and the Overture to Mikhail Glinka’s “Ruslan and Ludmila.”

Kamio performed the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with meticulous care, generating a gorgeous and rich tone throughout the piece. She effortlessly created fortissimos and excelled in bringing the volume down to super soft pianissimos. Her quiet playing during the big cadenza in the first movement was almost drowned out by the pounding rain on the roof. But some of the tempos in the third movement were a tad slow and caused the music-making to drag a little. Still, the accelerando into the final movement preceded an amazing set of fireworks from Kamio. The orchestra, guided expertly by Salvador Brotons, accompanied her with terrific sensitivity, and the audience responded with thunderous applause.

Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony is a veritable roller coaster of a piece and it received an emotionally gripping performance from the orchestra. There was a little bit of uncertainty now and then in the first movement with a couple of shaky entrances and a choppy blend in the brass. But the musicians settled down and reeled off a wonderful ensemble sound the rest of the way. Superb solos dotted the music, including meltingly beautiful phrases of principal clarinetist Igor Shahkman, golden sounds from principal trumpeter Bruce Dunn, snarling brass, deep and dark tones from principal bassoonist Margaret McShea and colleague Nicole Buetti, and sweeping lovely passages from the strings.

The violins at the outset of the third movement were light and bright but not together and one of the trombones tried to come in too early. But the crescendos and decrescendos were thrilling as well as the exciting uptick, which added a fearlessness to the march that closed out the movement. The cry of despair in the fourth movement came from the entire ensemble and the poignancy of the music especially came across in the final throbbing pattern heartbeats from the bass violins.

Brotons conducted the entire piece from memory, and his energetic presence on the podium added to the compelling dynamics. Urging the musicians from a crouched position, he wrung out as much emotion as possible, and the piece concluded with a dignified solemn silence.

The orchestra performed the Overture to Glinka’s “Ruslan and Lumila” better than ever. The violins played together at full speed with outstanding precision, including intonation. The cellos sang out will a richer and fuller expression than I’ve heard before. Just a couple of slight hesitations in entrances took off a bit of the polish, but overall, the musicians gave the gem plenty of sparkle to make it glow.

The concert marked the beginning of the 26th season for Brotons, and the orchestra, especially the strings, is upping its game, which is a good sign.
– James Bash, Northwest Reverb

MAYUKO KAMIO ENTRANCES WITH SYMPHONY SILICON VALLEY
“Over the weekend, the Japanese-born soloist was back again, demonstrating her range with a work of an entirely different character, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, nicknamed the “Turkish.” I attended Sunday’s performance at the California Theatre — the second of two — and was taken with the many dimensions of her playing, as well as her ability to partner with the musicians around her. This was a performance of balance and charm, from the first measures of her adagio entrance, seamlessly blending with the whispering strings and translucent wind chords.”
– Richard Scheinin, San Jose Mercury News

VIOLINIST MAYUKO KAMIO TURNS IN RICH ACCOUNTS OF EUROPEAN, JAPANESE COMPOSERS
When Japan first opened its doors to European music in the late 19th century, it was love at first sight — first with the great Romantic-era composers, and soon with the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel. The romance has endured, and Thursday night at the Freer Gallery, the young Japanese violinist Mayuko Kamio (with Katherine Chi on piano) explored its legacy, turning in rich, full-blooded accounts of two works by Brahms, some wildly colorful Ravel and music by contemporary Japanese composers that showed how interconnected the two musical cultures have remained.

Still in her 20s, Kamio is a world-class virtuoso — she won a gold medal at the 2007 International Tchaikovsky Competition — with exceptional power and a fine sense of drama, as she showed in the Scherzo movement from Brahms’s “F-A-E” Sonata. It’s an early work, but still full of Brahmsian melancholy and rolling pathos, which Kamio brought off with great sensitivity. Brahms’s more mature Sonata No. 1 followed, delivered with a ravishing tone and polished to gleaming perfection. Perhaps, to some ears, even a little too perfect. For all the power and virtuosity of Kamio’s playing, she never really seemed to reveal much about herself, and there was little of that sense of spontaneity — the intimate, risk-taking depth — that can make Brahms such a profound human experience.

Toshio Hosokawa’s 1994 “Vertical Time Study III” is a rather severe and academic work, built out of spare musical gestures punctuated by periods of silence. It’s unmistakably rooted in late 20th-century European modernism, but it has a distinctively calligraphic and Zenlike beauty, which Kamio brought out in a limpid reading. More immediately charming, though, was Shinichiro Ikebe’s music for the film “Catharsis” — evocative melodies for solo violin that combined folklike simplicity with great sophistication.

But the showstopper of the evening was Maurice Ravel’s gypsy-flavored “Tzigane,” a tour de force for violin full of bluesy bent notes and lavish exoticism. It’s a piece that begs to be played extravagantly, and Kamio and Chi pulled out the stops for a bravura performance that brought the Freer audience to its feet.
– Stephen Brookes, Washington Post

Orchestral Repertoire

Bach
Concerto No. 1 in a minor, BWV 1041
Concerto No. 2 in E major, BWV 1042
Concerto for Two Violins in d minor, BWV 1043

Barber
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra

Bartok
Concerto No. 2

Beethoven
Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
Triple Concerto in C Major, Op. 56

Berg
Concerto

Bernstein
Serenade for Violin, String Orchestra, Harp and Percussion (1954)

Brahms
Concerto in D Major, Op. 77
Double Concerto for Violin & cello in a minor, Op. 102

Bruch
Concerto in g minor, Op. 26

Dvorák
Concerto in a minor, Op. 53

Glazunov
Concerto in a minor, Op. 82

Khachaturian
Concerto in d minor

Korngold
Concerto

Lalo
“Symphonie Espagnole” Op. 21

Mendelssohn
Concerto in e minor, Op. 64

Mozart
Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216
Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218
Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219
Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, viola and Orchestra, K. 364

Paganini
Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 6

Prokofiev
Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19
Concerto No. 2 in g minor, Op. 16

Saint-Saens
Concerto No. 3 in b minor, Op. 61

Schnittke, A
Concerto Grosso No.1 for Two Violins and Orchestra
Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Chamber Orchestra (1968)

Shostakovich
Concerto No. 1 in a minor, Op. 99

Sibelius
Concerto in d minor, Op. 47

Spohr
Concerto No. 8 in a minor, Op. 47

Stravinsky
Concerto in D Major

Tchaikovsky
Concerto in D Major, Op. 35

Vieuxtemps
Concerto No. 5 in a minor, Op. 37

Vivaldi
Four Seasons

Waxman
Carmen Fantasie (After Bizet)

*Updated June 2022