The Capybara Piano Quartet was born from the meeting of four young soloists from all over Europe (Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Kronberg).
Founded in 2021, Shuichi Okada (violin), Takehiro Konoe (viola) and Minjoung Kim (cello) met in the prestigious Ozawa academy where they had the chance to work with great teachers like Sadao Harada and Nobuko Imai. Having the same passion for chamber music, they decided to create the quartet with the pianist Mario Häring.
Winners of major international competitions (Leeds, ARD, Geneva, Paulo, Kreisler, Cassado) they are regularly called upon to play on the biggest stages both in Europe and abroad as soloists or in chamber music.
In 2023 the quartet was the first piano quartet to win the prestigeous Osaka International Chamber Music Competition and will be returning to Japan in November 2024 for a national tour.
Born in 1995 in Bordeaux, Shuichi Okada began studying the violin at the age of five.
He studied at the CNSM of Paris in the class of Roland Daugareil. He has won many competitions (Postacchini, Ginette Neveu, Mirecourt, Lipizer, Fritz Kreisler, Markneukirchen, Prince of Hessen Prize at the Kronberg Academy)
Shuichi is regularly invited to festivals (Evian, Colmar, Vézère, Les Moments musicaux de La Baule, Deauville, Giverny, Guéthary, Orangerie de Sceaux, Ravel, Palazetto Bru Zane), where he has performed with artists such as Jérôme Pernoo, Jérôme Ducros, Raphaël Pidoux, Jean-Claude Vanden Eyden, Peter Frankl, Philippe Jaroussky, Mathieu Herzog, Antoine Tamestit, Claire Désert, Lise Berthaud, Pierre Fouchenneret, Itamar Golan and Augustin Dumay, among others.
Together with Jean-Paul Gasparian (piano) and Gauthier Broutin (cello), he forms Trio Cantor, in residence at the Singer Polignac Foundation since September 2016.
He recorded his first album, with pianist Clément Lefebvre on the Mirare label in 2019.
In chamber music he recorded Brahms’s two string quintets and sextets on the B-records label with Pierre Fouchenneret, Lise Berthaud, Adrien Boisseau, François Salque and Yan Levionnois.
In September 2019 he entered the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel under the direction of Augustin Dumay.
Takehiro Konoe was born 1997 in Amsterdam.
He started playing violin at the age of four with Professor Coosje Wijzenbeek. A few months later he became a member of Prof. Wijzenbeek’s string ensemble Fancy Fiddlers where he played until 2015. In 2003, he played with his twins sister Mayu a duet at a legendary dutch Violinist Theo Olof’s 80th birthday party and one year later, they played a duet again with Daniel Wayenberg. Two years later they were invited to play in Monaco at Monique Collignon’s fashion show.
In August 2008, he and his sister were chosen to perform at the Kinder Prinsengracht Concert in Amsterdam. They played J.S. Bach’s concerto for 2 violins in front of more than 3000 people, which was also live broadcast on TV.
Later in that year, Takehiro and Mayu performed the same piece in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam with the Nederlands Theater Orkest, and a year later they performed there again with their quartet, Quartetto Piccolo.
In 2011, Takehiro and his sister were honored to play Schumann’s Piano Quintet with Lucas Jussen at Menahem Pressler’s masterclass in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. With this piece, they have performed with amazing pianists, such as Menahem Pressler himself at the 125th anniversary of the Concertgebouw in December 2013, Nino Gvetadze, and Paolo Giacometti.
In February 2014, he gave a repeat performance with this piece at the NEXT GENERATION Festival Bad Ragaz in Switzerland. Since then he has been invited every year to take part in this festival.
He was also a member of the “Ensemble Esperanza”of the Internationale Musikakademie Liechtenstein, with students from around the world from the age of 17 to 25.Their debut CD has released in 2017 that was presented with the “Special Achievement Award” at the International Classical Music Awards 2017.
In May 2015, Takehiro and Mayu won the first prize at the Prinses Christina Competition, thereby they performed Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante K.364 with the Hague Philharmonic Orchestra (October 2015, Conducted by Richard Egarr), Sinfonietta Rotterdam (November 2016, Conducted by Conrad van Alpen) and Dvorak’s String Quintet with the Rubens Quartet in different halls, including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (February 2016). Also they were invited from “Musica Classica” International Music festival at Joao Pessoa in Brazil in December 2015.
Since September 2016 he is studying viola at the Conservatory of Amsterdam with Nobuko Imai & Francien Schatborn.
In February 2017 he won the first prize at the 5th National Viola Competition in Amsterdam. In summer 2017, He had a recital
tour in Japan.
June 2018 he became a finalist at the 4th Tokyo International Viola Competition where he was awarded ‘Suntory Foundation for Arts’ and in September he won the third prize at the 67th ARD International Music Competition at Munich (Munchen).
November 2018 He played the viola concerto of Max Knigge at the 45th International Viola Congress in Rotterdam.
Beginning of 2019 He was invited to play the Bowen viola concerto with the Schleswig-Holstein Symphonie Orchester.
Later in October he made his debut in Naples where he
played a recital and Hoffmeister concerto with the Chamber orchestra of Caserta,
He took part of the String Quartet class at the Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland in 2018 and 2019.
He plays on a copy of a “Carlo Bergonzi” viola made by Roger Hargrave in 1991
Minjoung Kim was born in South Korea in 1995 and began playing the cello at the age of six. She won first prizes in international competitions even at a very young age, and performed her debut recital at the Kumho Art Hall in Seoul, South Korea, in 2004.
Kim gained her bachelor’s degree at the Musik-Akademie Basel. Following her bachelor’s, she studied at the Reina Sofía School of Music. At both schools, she studied with Ivan Monighetti and also worked together with Sol Gabetta during this time.
She has won awards in many international competitions, including the International Paulo Cello Competition in Helsinki, the Benedetto Mazzacurati International Cello Competition in Turin, the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann in Berlin and the Prague Spring International Music Competition.
Minjoung Kim holds scholarships from the Migros Culture Percentage cultural promotion programme and the Rahn Kulturfonds, as well as from the International Academy of Music in Liechtenstein where she regularly participates in masterclasses.
She performs worldwide, both as a soloist and chamber musician, with international orchestras such as the Incheon Philharmonic Orchestra, Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Jyväskylä Sinfonia, Orchestre Musique des Lumières and the Gstaad Festival Orchestra.
She has been studying at Kronberg Academy with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt since October 2020. Her studies are funded by the Dieter and Catrin Hofmann patronage.
Mario Häring attracted international attention in 2018 by winning Second Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition. He also received the Yaltah Menuhin Award for the best chamber-music performance in the semi-final.
Häring made his orchestral debut at the Philharmonie Berlin in 2003. He has since appeared at concert halls including Konzerthaus Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Wiener Konzerthaus, Wigmore Hall in London, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. As a soloist, he has performed with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, the Osaka Symphony Orchestra and the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, working with conductors including Alexander Lazarev, Edward Gardner, Lars Vogt, Kahchun Wong and Ari Rasilainen. His festival appearances include La Roque d’Anthéron, the Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and the “Spannungen” Festival in Heimbach.
Chamber music has been an integral part of Mario Häring’s musical life since childhood. He regularly performs as a duo with Sharon Kam, Valerie Fritz and Liv Migdal. He is a founding member of the Bawandi Trio with clarinettist Patrick Hollich and cellist Alexandre Castro-Balbi, as well as of the Capybara Piano Quartet with violinist Shuichi Okada, violist Takehiro Konoe and cellist Minjoung Kim. In 2023, the Capybara Piano Quartet became the first piano quartet in the competition’s history to win First Prize at the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition. As part of the ECHO “Rising Stars” series, Häring performed with cellist Kian Soltani, oboist Cristina Gómez Godoy, violist Sara Ferrández and cellist Valerie Fritz in some of Europe’s leading concert halls.
For the album Røta, recorded together with violinist Ragnhild Hemsing and cellist Benedict Klöckner, he was awarded the Opus Klassik in 2021. In 2025, he and violinist Liv Migdal received the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for the album Beyond Horizons.
On his album EXTASE, released on Berlin Classics, Häring explores the emotions of an imaginary Berlin techno weekend through works by Debussy, Liszt, Connesson, Scriabin, Cage, Rachmaninoff and Wagner. Between ecstasy, intoxication and intimacy, the album moves through musical worlds that at first glance seem scarcely connected.
Mario Häring was born in Hanover in 1989 and grew up in Berlin. Coming from a German-Japanese family of musicians, he gained his first experiences with the violin and piano at the age of three. He studied with Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and Prof. Lars Vogt at HMTM Hanover, graduating in 2017 with the highest possible grade.
Mario Häring is Professor of Piano at the University of the Arts Bremen.