Hiroki Kasai

Born in London, Great Britain, in 1999. Since 2023, he studies at the Reina Sofía School of Music’s Fundación BBVA Viola Chair with professor Nobuko Imai. He has been granted scholarships by Lynne and David Weinberg and Fundación Albéniz.

He started playing violin, until graduating with First-Class Honours in 2021 at the Royal Academy of Music in London, after having been trained by prestigious professors. In 2022, encouraged by Nobuko Imai, he began playing viola. Additionally, he studied chamber music at the Seiji Ozawa International Academy, Switzerland, and has attended masterclasses by Rainer Schmidt, Gabor Takacs-Nagy, Sadao Harada, Daniel Hope, Marie Chilemme, and Suyoen Kim, among others.

Winner of several competitions and awards, he has performed at venues like Elbphilharmonie, Carnegie Hall, Tokyo Suntory Hall, Victoria Hall, Lincoln Centre, and Barbican; and festivals such as Beethovenfest Bonn, Pacific, Gstaad Menuhin and, as a soloist, with the Schleswig-Bonn Festival Orchestra conducted by Ton Koopman (concert recorded by the NDR and broadcasted all around the world). Likewise, he has performed conducted by Valéry Gergiev, Christophe Eschenbach, Manfred Honeck, and Semyon Bychkov.

As a student of the School, he is currently part of the Stoneshield and of the Strauss quartets.