Ever since violist Diyang Mei’s brilliant success at the 2018 ARD International Music Competition, winning first prize in the viola category, the Audience Prize, and several special prizes, he has been steadily furthering his international career. Since 2022, he serves as 1st Principal Viola of Berliner Philharmoniker and holds a guest professorship at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.

As a soloist, Diyang Mei has performed with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the SWR Festival Schwetzingen, the Schwarzwald Music Festival and the Mozartfest in Würzburg, among others.

Highlights in 2024 include his solo appearances with the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie under the direction of Brett Dean and with the China Philharmonic Orchestra at the National Centre for the Performing Arts under the direction of Christoph Eschenbach. As a sought-after chamber musician, Diyang has already performed with renowned musicians and ensembles such as Sir András Schiff, Frans Helmerson, Emmanuel Pahud, Albrecht Mayer, Sabine Meyer, Christoph Prégardien, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Kian Soltani, Pablo Ferrández, the Belcea Quartet and the Berlin Baroque Soloists, with whom he went on a major tour of China in 2023.

He was awarded first prizes at the 52nd International Instrumental Competition for Viola in Markneukirchen (2017), at the International Max Rostal Music Competition for Viola in Berlin (2015), at the Kulturkreis Gasteig Musikpreis for Strings in Munich (2015), at the IVC Young Artist Competition in Rochester (2012), at the 19th International Johannes Brahms Viola Competition in Austria (2012) and at the 10th International Viola and Cello Competition in Villa de Llanes, Spain (2008).

In 2024 two CDs with Diyang Mei as a soloist have been released:
- Mozart Viola Concerto & Sinfonia Concertante recorded with the Berliner Barock Solisten (Sony Classical)
- Viola Concertos by Bowen and Walton, recorded with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under the baton of Brett Dean (SWR Music/Naxos).Diyang Mei has studied with Shaowu Wang in China, with Hariolf Schlichtig at the University of Music and performing Arts in Munich, and with Nobuko Imai at the Kronberg Academy. From 2019 to 2022, he was the principal viola of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.

Since 2018, Diyang Mei has been supported as a BBT Artist by the London Borletti-Buitoni Trustmusician, and plays an Antonio Mariani viola (Pesaro, ca. 1646), generously loaned by a member of the Stretton Society.

“The immediacy of his approach, the ever-charged music-making, the logic of phrasing, the rhythmic stability, and the astonishing precision of intonation characterized all of Diyang Mei’s performances.”
– Harald Eggebrecht, Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 2018

“He is at peace with himself, yet emotionally he is profoundly present. Like the voice of a wandering soul, the viola solo carves its way out of nothingness.”
– Barbara Doll, Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 2019

“Even more impressive are his passion for melody, his refined bowing technique – even in a whirlwind of tempo or at the edge of a rhythmic abyss; impressive are his finely nuanced tonal colors, which he shapes with lightning-fast changes and striking contrasts, ranging from delicate and restrained to powerful salvos of sound.”
– Rita Baedeker, Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 2020

“Mei produced a reading [of Bartók’s Viola Concerto at the 2018 ARD competition] that was clear-sighted, outgoing, and thoroughly enjoyable. As he had shown in the commissioned piece, he is an imaginative interpreter. In his hands, the opening theme wandered like a lost soul, full of desolate, keen-edged beauty; elsewhere, he delved into the darker, aggressively rhythmic passages with thrilling tenacity. The central *Adagio religioso* was as sweetly yearning as one could desire, and by the end of the piece, the listener was left with the impression of a player who might just have that intangible quality of an influential voice, perhaps even a new advocate for the viola.”– Chloe Cutts, *The Strad*, January 2019