Sayaka Shoji

Sayaka Shoji – Beethoven & Sibelius: Violin Concertos (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:53 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © UNIVERSAL MUSIC LLC

Described by Gramophone magazine as ​“a formidable musician, able to draw on huge reserves of stamina and the unflinching equal of anything thrown at her,” Sayaka Shoji regularly performs with the world’s leading conductors including: Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mariss Jansons, Zubin Mehta, Paavo Järvi, Osmo Vänskä, Sir Antonio Pappano and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Recent engagements have included concerts with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.

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Sayaka Shoji – Mozart: Sonatas for Fortepiano and Violin Vol. 1 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:05:48 minutes | 2,34 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © UNIVERSAL MUSIC LLC

Shoji was born in Tokyo into an artistic family (her mother is a painter; her grandmother, a poet) and spent her early childhood in Siena, Italy. When she was 5 years old her family moved back to Japan, where she started studying the violin. From 1995 until 2000, she studied at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana under Uto Ughi and Riccardo Brengola. At the age of 13, she went to Germany for a year to study with Saschko Gawriloff. In 1998, she moved to Germany to study at Hochschule für Musik Köln under Zakhar Bron and graduated in 2004. She then continued her study with Gawriloff and also took masterclasses of Shlomo Mintz.

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Sayaka Shoji – Bach: Sonates et Partitas – Reger: Préludes et Fugues (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:46:05 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Mirare

Sayaka Shoji has paired solo violin sonatas and partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach with counterparts of a sort among the eight preludes and fugues for solo violin by Max Reger. The first pairing begins with Reger’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, op. 117/2, which bears a resemblance to Bach’s First Solo Sonata. Shoji reveals a great deal of the intelligence and wit that illuminates Reger’s conception: occasional chromatic lines in the prelude and a fugue that sounds related to Bach’s but with enhancements that lend the work the suggestion of pastiche. Shoji makes these allusions almost playfully, though with a formidable technical command and tonal opulence on the 1729 Récamier Stradivari (can this be the 1727 Récamier Stradivari played by Mischa Elman?). Her personality changes for a heavier and darker reading of Bach’s First Solo Sonata, also in G Minor; the first movement appears in her version more a rhapsody, which may be the way it’s intended, but her reading of the Fuga, though nuanced and allusive, hardly suggests the subtlety and high spirits she demonstrated in Reger’s work. The Siciliano similarly may sound fussy (at least at first) to many listeners weaned on more straightforward readings by older violinists, although she gives the impression of sustaining the pedal-like notes. In the finale she strikes a balance between playing the rhythm straightforwardly and constantly shifting the meters with kaleidoscopic unpredictability.
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