Yuuko Shiokawa was born in Tokyo and began playing violin at the age of five. After studies in Peru with Eugen Cremer she came to Europe where she studied with Wilhelm Stross and Sandor Vegh. At 19, she won both the Memdelssohn Prize and the Preis der Deutschen Musikhochschulen and began to give concerts throughout Europe under conductors including Rafael Kubelik, Herbert von Karajan, and Herbert Blomstedt. Greatly impressed by her playing, Rafael Kubelik in 1967 placed at her dis-posal a 1715 Stradivarius violin that had belonged to the conductor's father, Czech com-poser/violinist Jan Kubelik.

Yuuko Shiokawa has given concerts with many orchestras including the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, the London Symphony, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo. Since 1969 she has also given concerts regularly in Japan.

www.ecmrecords.com/Background/Background_1699.php