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The German violinist, Susanna Yoko Henkel, was born and raised in a German-Japanese family of professional musicians. She started playing the violin already at age 2, starting with her mother. She was mainly trained by the legendary violin pedagogue Ana Chumachenco in Munich; before that she was receiving lessons as a young student of the former concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Rainer Kussmaul. Already during her early studies she has won many prestigiou prizes at international competitions such as the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels (1997), International Violin Competition in Seoul, South Korea (1997), Mozart Competition in Salzburg (1999; 3rd Prize) and Tibor Varga Competition in Sion (1998; 2nd Prize). In 1998, she won the 1st Prize at the German Music Competition in Berlin; and in 1999 the 1st Prize at the International Violin Competition in Markneukirchen. She has also has received scholarships by the Mozart Gesellschaft Dortmund and the German Foundation "Musikleben".
In 2011, Susanna Yoko Henkel was awarded with the prestigious "ECHO Klassik" award for her live recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. This award, which has often been quoted as the "European Grammy", has carried the young violinist into the centre of high media interest, which has led to appearances in the most popular German TV-shows and introduced her to a large audience. In October 2012, she made her debut in the sold-out Philharmonie in Cologne/Germany. Since many years she is appearing regularly with leading European orchestras such as the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Sinfonieorchester Mozarteum Salzburg, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, German Chamber Academy Neuss, Symphony Orchestra Aachen, MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, National Orchestra Frankfurt/Oder, SWR Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, National Orchestra Mainz, Philharmonic Orchestra Duisburg, Puchon Philharmonic Orchestra Seoul, European Union Chamber Orchestra, Waterbury Symphony Orchestra, Florida West Coast Symphony Orchestra and many others. In 2003, she was selected as soloist for the highly regarded 'Toyota Classics' tour and appears with the Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and in the Philippines. The Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra chose her as Artist in Residence in 2009-2010, followed by a close collaboration. In June 2013, she performed the Bruch Violin Concerto with the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra; the German State Television WDR broadcast this live-performance.
Susanna Yoko Henkel has already released 7 CD's, which have all been highly praised by leading music journals. The German Welt am Sonntag has elected her as one of Anne-Sophie Mutter’s heiresses, and the USA music magazine Strings honored her with a cover story in 2007. Her discography includes all J.S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo (BWV 1001-1006, released 2006), chamber music by Ravel, Prokofjev/Strauss violin sonatas, solo works by Ysang Yun, Béla Bartók and Ysaye, duo works for violin and cello by George Frideric Handel/Johan Halvorsen, Hanns Eisler, Schulhoff and Zoltán Kodály, and the live-recording of the Tchaikovsky Zoltán Kodály, which has won the "ECHO Klassik" award in 2011. In October 2011, she released her latest CD with W.A. Mozart's Violin Concertos. For this recording, she directed a chamber orchestra for the first time and wrote all cadenzas herself. Sshe recently worked on different new CD projects, which were released in 2013-2014.
Besides her work as a soloist, Susanna Yoko Henkel is also a dedicated chamber musician. In 2006 she founded her own chamber music festival in Zagreb/Croatia, which belongs to the leading cultural events in Croatia. Her chamber music partners include, among others, Gabriela Montero, Lauma Skride, Pavel Gililov, Milana Chernyavska, Radovan Vlatković, Jing Zhao and Maxim Rysanov. The festival’s live-broadcasts have been released on YouTube and have reached more than one million views so far.
Susanna Yoko Henkel holds a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne and at the Music Academy in Zagreb.
Susanna Yoko Henkel plays on the "Ex Leslie Tate" Stradivarius from 1710, generously loaned by a private proprietor. She previously played on a violin built 1705 in Brescia/Italy by Giovanni Battista Rogerius. |
