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A master of both modern and Baroque violins and a prominent conductor in historically informed performances,
Shunske Sato has won recognition for his concerts and recordings of
Bach,
Vivaldi, and
Telemann, as well as standard Classical and Romantic concerto repertoire. Born in 1984 in Tokyo,
Sato started lessons on the violin at age 2, and by 4 he was a student of Chin Kim. He made his debut with the
Philadelphia Orchestra when he was 10, and launched his career by winning the first prize in the Young Concert Artists competition in 1997, when he was 12.
Sato competed at the 17th International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig in 2010, winning the second prize and the audience prize, and he was the recipient of the Idemitsu Award and the S & R Washington Award.
Sato's education took him to the Juilliard School, where he studied with Dorothy DeLay and
Maseo Kawasaki, and later in Paris, where he worked with
Gérard Poulet. He earned his graduate diploma at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, where he studied Baroque violin with Mary Utiger.
Sato plays Baroque violin as the concertmaster of
Concerto Köln and he is the artistic director of the
Netherlands Bach Society. He has performed as soloist with the Orchestra Libera Classica, the
Berliner Lautten Compagney, and the
Academy of Ancient Music. He has also collaborated with major symphony orchestras in standard concerto performances, appearing in Europe, and Japan, as well as with American orchestras. An accomplished chamber musician,
Sato has performed with
Christine Schornsheim,
Hidemi Suzuki, and
Richard Egarr. In addition to his Baroque violin recordings,
Sato has also recorded
Niccolò Paganini’s Caprices for solo violin using gut strings, and played a modern violin in
Eugène Ysaÿe's unaccompanied violin sonatas,
Edvard Grieg's sonatas for violin and piano, and works for violin and viola by
Akira Nishimura.