Award-winning soloist Sunao Goko is increasingly recognized as a rising star of the violin world. Recipient of the 2019 Idemitsu Music Award, he also won both First Prize and the Audience Award at the 2013 International Tibor Varga Violin Competition Sion Valais. Born in Miyagi in 1993, he won First Prize in the 11th Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists in 2006, becoming the youngest winner in the competition’s history.
　
Since Goko’s 2007 debut as a soloist, he has performed with orchestras including the New Japan Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Osaka Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, and Sendai Philharmonic, with conductors such as Gerhard Bosse, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Michiyoshi Inoue, and Kentaro Kawase. He made his debut with the Saito Kinen Festival (currently the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival) performing Stravinsky’s L'Histoire du soldat in 2011. He has also been invited to various music festivals including the Spring Festival in Tokyo. He performed a full cycle of the Beethoven violin sonatas across 3 years, starting in 2017. His previous teachers include Mami Teshigawara, Gerhard Bosse, Akiko Tatsumi, and Pavel Vernikov. In January 2020, he released his 4th CD album “LA BELGUIQUE” on the Exton label. He plays the 1682 "Banat" Stradivarius.
　
This is his second appearance at PMF since 2019. In addition to his performance as concertmaster of the PMF Orchestra JAPAN on Program A, he will also perform a recital.