Vitor Vieira

Vitor Vieira

is a member of the Matosinhos String Quartet (MSQ) and teaches at the Escola Superior de Música, Artes e Espetáculo in Oporto. He has been developing unprecedented projects in Portugal, such as full cycles of the great string quartet repertoire (the MSQ has performed the full cycles of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Schumann, and is still presenting Haydn, Beethoven and Shostakovich cycles) and the main works of the portuguese repertoire. The MSQ as appeared in the main venues in Portugal (Festivals in Póvoa de Varzim, Espinho, Estoril, Coimbra and the Dias da Música in Lisbon’s Centro Cultural de Belém) and colaborated with some of the most distinguished portuguese musicians, such as Pedro Burmester, António Rosado, Miguel Borges Coelho, Pedro Carneiro, António Saiote and Paulo Gaio Lima. The MSQ as been selected as one of the European Concert Hall Organization’s Rising Stars for the 2014/15 season, and will perform at some of Europe’s most prestigious concert halls, such as London’s Barbican, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Wien’s Musikverein.
Vitor Vieira studied with Aníbal Lima at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra and Gerardo Ribeiro at Northwestern University, whom he also worked with as a teaching assistant. He also worked in masterclasses with Alexei Mikhline, Sergey Kravchenko, Eduard Wulfson and Mauricio Fux. He also studied at the Instituto Internacional de Musica de Cámara de Madrid with Rainer Schmidt, violinist of the Hagen Quartet and worked with several violinists from established string quartets, such as Gunter Pichler (Alban Berg Quartet), Walter Levin (Lasalle Quartet), Ida Beiler (Melos Quartet), Philip Setzer (Emerson Quartet) and Mathias Tacke (Vermeer Quartet). He was awarded scholarships from the Gulbenkian Fundation.
Vitor Vieira was awarded 1st prizes at the Prémio Jovens Músicos competition in Portugal in 2001 (medium level) and 2003 (superior level), as well as the Samuel Thaviu Competition in Chicago and Northwestern University’s Concerto Competition (2005). He as appeared as soloists in some of Portugal’s most important concert halls, such as the Gulbenkian Foundation, Centro Cultural de Belém, Culturgest and Casa da Música with the Gulbenkian, Oporto and Metropolitan Academic Orchestras. He also performed as a soloist with the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra and has played recitals in Portugal, including live radio performances. As a member of the Tacet String Quartet, he was awarded 1st prize in the Prémio Jovens Músicos competition in 2004.
Vitor Vieira is commited to contemporary music, having worked with composers such as John Adams and Karin Renquist. With the MSQ he premiered works from portuguese composers such as Carlos Azevedo, Carlos Guedes, Fernando Lapa, Vasco Mendonça, Miguel Azguime, Eurico Carrapatoso, António Chagas Rosa, Nuno Corte-Real, António Pinho Vargas, Álvaro Salazar, Sérgio Azevedo, Paulo Ferreira-Lopes, Eduardo Patriarca and Telmo Marques.