Czech-American violinist Matteo Hager was born in 2003 in Prague. He started playing the violin at the age of four. He graduated from the Music Gymnasium in Prague where he studied under Prof. Jiří Fišer and was awarded a merit-based scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he is presently studying under Prof. Rodney Friend.
Matteo is the laurate of several national and international competitions, such as the Czech National Music Competition, the Josef Micka Violin Competition, the France Music Competition, the Augustin Aponte Music Competition in Spain, the Note di Talento competition in Italy, the International Showcase Music Competition in Hamburg, to name a few. Matteo was also awarded the Golden Medal at the 5th Manhattan International Music Competition and the first prize of the Academy of Václav Hudeček.
In 2023, Matteo was featured as a “Rising Star” in BBC ́s Music Magazine.
Matteo has given concerts across three continents and cooperated with acclaimed conductors including Tomáš Netopil, Radek Baborák, Chuhei Iwasaki, Tomáš Brauner, Marek Šedivý, Petr Vronský, Jan Kučera, Naci Özgüç and Alena Hron. He has collaborated as soloist with the Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK, Prague Philharmonia, Philharmonic Orchestra of Bohuslav Martinů, Westbohemian Symphony, the Ukrainian-Czech Sinfonietta, I Virtuosi di Kyiv, PKS, Central London Orchestra, Bursa Regional State Symphony Orchestra, and several other orchestras. In 2023 Matteo was chosen to represent the Royal Academy of Music as a soloist in New York. In 2024, Matteo performed as a soloist at the Konzerthaus Berlin at the Young Euro Classic Festival.
Together with the violinist Martina Bačová he cooperated on the album Violin: Solos and Duets.
Matteo is also a founding member of the Ernest Bloch Trio.
One of Matteo’s greatest passions is composing. As a laurate of the Showcase of Young Talented Soloists and Composers 2022, Matteo was invited to perform his own composition Threnody at Rudolfinum within the international music festival Dvořákova Praha. He premiered his own Violin Concerto as a laureate of the Showcase 2024 in Prague. He ́s been also commissioned to compose music for both theater and film, including the feature length French-Czech coproduction Le Syndrome de l ́été sans fin (2023) by Kaveh Daneshmand.
Matteo is the recipient of the ABRSM ́s (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) scholarship, Albert Cooper Music Charitable Trust ́s grant, Suresh and Richard McMillan Scholarship for Music and the Comenium Musicum Academy MenART ́s grant by Božena Viskupová and Alena Viková.