Over the past 20 years, the 1st concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Sebastian Breuninger and the 1st solo cellist Christian Giger have performed together in countless chamber music concerts, from duos to octets. They have also appeared together as soloists, for example in Brahms’ Double Concerto, Haydn’s Sinfonia concertante and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. Together with two other leading string players of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, deputy 1st concertmaster Julius Bekesch and principal violist Chaim Steller, the artists regularly interpret masterpieces of music history.
Japanese pianist Yuka Kobayashi began taking lessons at the age of four at the Toho Gakuen College of Music in Tokyo, where she later graduated with a bachelor’s degree under Sadako Matsuoka. As a Rotary International scholarship holder, she then studied in Germany at the Staatliche Musikhochschulen in Frankfurt/Main and Cologne with Hartmut Höll, solo piano with Joachim Volkmann and Günter Ludwig, and chamber music with Rainer Hofmann, Primoz Novsak and the Amadeus Quartet. In all three subjects, she passed the Artist’s Maturity Examination with distinction.
She pursues an extensive concert career as a chamber musician and has performed in such prestigious halls as the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Liederhalle Stuttgart, Gewandhaus Leipzig, St.Petersburg Philharmonic, Tchaikovsky Hall Moscow, Casals Hall Tokyo and Izumi Hall Osaka, as well as at festivals such as the mdr-Musiksommer, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Rachmaninov Festival Paris, the Festival “Musique et Amitié” in Biel/CH and the Leipzig Chamber Music Festival.
With cellist Christian Giger, she recorded a CD on the Accent Music label with works by Brahms, Hindemith and Bartel. Tours take the duo annually to Japan and they regularly play duo recitals at the Leipzig Gewandhaus.
In 2002, Yuka Kobayashi made her debut as soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. She has also performed with outstanding artists such as Maria Graf, Sharon Kam, Frans Helmerson, Arto Noras, Robert McDuffie, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Stefan Hussong.