Hungarian-born violist Máté Szücs has had a career as an award winning soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player. Máté was the first principal viola in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra from 2011 to 2018 where he also appeared as a soloist playing the Bartók Viola Concerto in September 2017. Máté has worked with prominent musicians such as Janine Jansen, Frank-Peter Zimmermann, Christian Tetzlaff, Vadim Repin, Ilja Gringolts, Vladimir Mendelssohn, László Fenyő, Kristof Baráti and István Várdai, Camille Thomas, Kirill Troussov and Julien Quentin. In addition to performing solo with the Berlin Philharmonic, he has soloed with orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Flanders, the “Bamberger Symphoniker”, the “Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden”, the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra and at the "Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen”, where he was also principal viola. Máté is a sought-after pedagogue. Since the summer of 2006 he has been a regular professor at the "Thy Masterclass" chamber music summer festival in Denmark and between 2012 and 2014 was also teaching at the Britten-Pears Festival in Aldeburgh, England.
He taught for two years at the University of Music in Saarbrücken; between 2014 and 2018 at the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; between 2015 and 2018 at the "Hanns Eisler" University of Music in Berlin; and between 2015 and 2016 at the Music Academy of Budapest. Máté gives masterclasses all over the world including New York, Los Angeles, Michigan, London, Berlin, Brussels, Shanghai, Taipei, Seoul and Tokyo. Since 2018 he is Professor of Viola at the Geneva University of Music in Switzerland.
Máté has gracefully accepted an invitation to The Exhale during a time when so many musicians and audience members are not in a position to engage with him in the concert hall or the classroom. He is donating his
income from The Exhale to musicians without regular income during this pandemic.
Spoken languages: English, Hungarian