Toby Cook, viola & Victor Lim, piano

Toby Cook

Currently studying with Tabea Zimmermann at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, Toby Cook regularly performs in venues across Europe, recently including the Santander and Tibor Varga music festivals. He is a holder of the ‘Ottilie-Selbach-Redslob’ and ‘Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Berlin e.V’ scholarships and was a semi-finalist in the 2019 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, receiving the Barbirolli prize.
Toby has received masterclasses from artists such as Nils Mönkemeyer, Pekka Kuusisto and Máté Szücs and has had the opportunity to collaborate with numerous composers on new works, including Garth Knox and Thomas Jones.

An avid chamber musician, Toby plays in a number of ensembles and has twice the performed with musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic and clarinetist Matthew Hunt at HellensMusic festival, as well as with Claudio Mehner in Santander and with members of the ARC ensemble at the ‘Music of Exile’ festival in Toronto, Canada.

As an orchestral musician, Toby has often played under acclaimed conductors such as Manfred Honeck and Gianandrea Noseda, and was a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra 2018, appearing on numerous radio and television broadcasts.
Toby is passionate about teaching and is a member of the European String Teachers’ Association, with whom he performed at conferences at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and in Valletta, Europe’s cultural capital in 2018.

Victor Lim

Described as a pianist with ‘with great possibilities of nuance and perfect flexibility’ (Revista Arta), South Korean-British pianist Victor Lim is establishing himself as one of the most versatile and creative musicians of his generation. Following his first public appearance in the televised BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2012, Victor has performed around the world in the UK, mainland Europe, China, Singapore and South Korea. In 2020, Victor performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5 ‘Emperor’ with NMH Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Eivind Aadland and released his first professional solo recording in 2022. Victor is a City Music Foundation Artist, Making Music UK’s Philip and Dorothy Green Young Artist and the winner of the 2021 RNCM Gold Medal.

As a musician with tireless curiosity for all genres of music, Victor’s repertoire ranges from Rameau to Kapustin and his interest in new music has led to recent collaborations with Graham Fitkin and Stephen Hough. Victor’s affinity with the music of Beethoven has been recognised by two awards from the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe, whilst he is known to have a great personal passion for the works of Robert Schumann.

Victor combines his active solo career with his great passion for chamber music. He has collaborated with many artists and currently enjoys close duo partnerships with soprano Xiang Ting Teng and cellist Waynne Kwon with whom the duo won the 2020 Tunnell Trust Music Club Award. Victor was the founding member of the Louko Piano Trio who went on to win all of the chamber music prizes during their time at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Victor trained at Wells Cathedral School with John Byrne and Richard Ormrod, then at the Royal Northern College of Music with Graham Scott, Jeremy Young and Murray McLachlan as an ABRSM scholar. Awards from Help Musicians UK and the Countess of Munster Musical Trust enabled Victor to continue his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Michael Dussek, where he graduated with a Dip.RAM and received the Christian Carpenter Prize for the best final recital. After pursuing the Artist Diploma programme at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Victor now continues his studies with Kathryn Stott at the RNCM.