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The Japanese-Australian violist, Hiyoli Togawa, was born and raised in Düsseldorf, Germany. As a child she played he violin but could not resist the temptation to play secretly on her father’s valuable old viola although explicitly told not to do so. This is how she found way to give her life its voice. She studied at Hochschule für Musik Köln (Diploma); Studied at Hochschule für Musik und Theater München (Master and certificate studies); and at Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth (String Quartet; 2011-2012). As a young student, she first studied with Rainer Moog and later with Antoine Tamestit. With the Artemis Quartett she acquired first-hand and comprehensive knowledge of quartets. Her most important mentor and teacher, however, would be Hariolf Schlichtig. After early successes in competitions - among others she won the 1.Bundespreis of “Jugend musiziert” – she got awards at various other competitions as well: at the Internationaler Viola-Wettbewerb in Markneukirchen, the Internationaler Brahms-Wettbewerb in Pörtschach and, repeatedly, at the “Musikinstrumentenfonds” of Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben.
Already from an early age on curiosity and open-mindedness have been the guiding principles of Hiyoli Togawa’s life. Grown up in the Rhineland and having Japanese and Australian roots, Hiyoli Togawa speaks her three “mother tongues” German, Japanese and Australian fluently. Building bridges between people, cultures and art by means of words and sounds is a primary concern of the cosmopolitan artist. In her concerts she does not only use the viola but also presentations to speak to her audience. She even developed novel types of concerts, in which she places music in new contexts by combining it with graphic art, literature, video and dance. An example thereof is "DANCE! VIOLA!" where she does not only play but also show her skills as a tournament dancer that she was trained to be at an early age.
Hiyoli Togawa travels around Europe and Japan to give chamber music concerts and solo recitals. She performs together with artists such as Alexej Gerassimez, Lilit Grigoryan, Igor Levit, Hariolf Schlichtig or Jörg Widmann, and is a regular guest performer at renowned festivals like the Schleswig Holstein Musikfestival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern or Heidelberger Frühling. As a soloist she performs together with the Hamburg Camerata, Nordic Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonie Bad Reichenhall or Klassische Philharmonie Bonn. Various foundations sponsor the innovative projects of this extraordinary artist, as for example: Oscar und Vera Ritter Stiftung, Orlandus Lassus Stiftung, Alfred-Töpfer-Stiftung, Werner Richard-Dr.Carl Dörken Stiftung and Yehudi Menuhin’s “Live Music Now”.
In January 2018 Naxos released her debut CD that was enthusiastically praised by critics. During the first lockdown in 2020, Hiyoli Togawa made it her mission to capture the isolation that was globally dealt with during the pandemic and commissioned 11 composers (e.g. Toshio Hosokawa, Kalevi Aho, Tigran Mansurian) to write solos for viola, especially for her project "Songs of Solitude". The album will be released in March 2021 (Label BIS).
Starting in the winter semester 2018-2019, Hiyoli Togawa took over a teaching assignment at the "Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich". |
