Miguel da Silva, viola

Miguel da Silva began his musical studies at a very young age at the Conservatoire national de région de Reims, his hometown, before entering the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris, where he studied with Serge Collot. There, he was awarded the First Prize in chamber music and the First Prize in viola, the latter unanimously with special distinction from the jury. 

In 1985, he won the First Grand Prize at the Concours international de musique de chambre de Paris in the sonata category and joined the orchestra of the Opéra de Paris. Since his teenage years, Miguel da Silva has been passionate about the string quartet. In 1987, he left the Opéra de Paris and founded the Quatuor Ysaÿe with three friends. He then moved to Cologne to work with the Amadeus Quartet. 

Numerous international competitions (Portsmouth, Évian), in which the quartet won First Prizes, opened the way for the Quatuor Ysaÿe to pursue an international career, taking them to Japan and the United States (Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum in New York), as well as to Israel and across Europe (Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Wigmore Hall in London, Berlin, and the festivals of Lockenhaus, Stresa and Salzburg). This remarkable journey came to an end in early 2014, when the quartet ceased its activities, with each member continuing their individual career. 

In chamber music, Miguel da Silva has collaborated with leading artists including Michel Portal, Jean-Claude Pennetier, Paul Meyer, Leonidas Kavakos, Pierre Amoyal, Nikita Boriso-Glebsky, Antonio Meneses, Augustin Dumay, Henri Demarquette, Truls Mørk, Gary Hoffman, Pascal Rogé, Emmanuel Pahud, Jean-François Heisser and Christophe Coin. In addition, he has appeared as a guest soloist with the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, the Orchestre de chambre de Pologne, the Orchestre d’Auvergne, the Franz Liszt Orchestra of Budapest, Sinfonia Varsovia, the orchestra of Montpellier and the orchestra of Pamplona, under the baton of conductors such as Peter Csaba, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Arie van Beek and François-Xavier Roth. 

Alongside his performing career, pedagogy has always been an essential part of his work. In 1993, at the Conservatoire national de région de Paris (now Conservatoire à rayonnement régional), Miguel da Silva worked with his colleagues from the Quatuor Ysaÿe to establish a dedicated string quartet class — a first in France. Their French students (Ébène, Modigliani, Voce, Hermès), as well as international ensembles (Aviv from Israel, Incanto from Switzerland, Différence from Latvia), have since won the majority of international string quartet competitions. In parallel with this quartet class at the CRR, for which he is now primarily responsible, Miguel da Silva leads advanced training classes at the Académies of Villecroze, Aldeburgh, the Académie Maurice Ravel in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Banff (Canada), Savonlinna (Finland), and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is also artistic advisor to the Académie musicale de Villecroze. 

Since September 2009 — after teaching viola and chamber music for two seasons at the Hochschule in Lübeck, succeeding Walter Levine — he has been appointed Professor of viola at the Haute École de Musique de Genève and regularly teaches within the ECMA (European Chamber Music Association) and the Summer Academy of the University of Music in Vienna (ISA). 

Miguel da Silva is Master in residence of the viola and chamber music sections at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. 

Last updated: 24 March 2026