) was a Hungarian violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist and conductor

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

.

Tibor Varga was born in Györ, Hungary in 1921, the birth place of violin greats Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...

, Leopold Auer

Leopold Auer

Leopold Auer was a Hungarian violinist, teacher, conductor and composer.-Early life and career:...

 and Carl Flesch

Carl Flesch

Carl Flesch was a violinist and teacher.Carl Flesch was born in Moson in Hungary in 1873. He began playing the violin at seven years of age. At 10, he was taken to Vienna, and began to study with Jakob Grün. At 17, he left for Paris, and joined the Paris Conservatoire...

. He studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music

Franz Liszt Academy of Music

The Franz Liszt Academy of Music is a concert hall and music conservatory in Budapest, Hungary, founded on November 14, 1875...

 in Budapest

Budapest

Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

 with Carl Flesch and Jenö Hubay

Jeno Hubay

Eugen Huber , better known by his Hungarian name Jenő Hubay , was a Hungarian violinist, composer and music teacher.-Early life:Eugen Huber was born into a German family of musicians in Pest, Hungary...

. He made his first public appearance at the age of six and performed the Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

 Violin Concerto

Violin Concerto (Mendelssohn)

Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 is his last large orchestral work. It forms an important part of the violin repertoire and is one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time...

 at the age of 10 and made his first recordings at the age of 13. He began touring Europe when he was 14.

He moved to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1947, where he became a British citizen.

Career

He had an extensive recording career with numerous labels. A recording of the Bartok Violin Concerto no. 2

Violin Concerto No. 2 (Bartók)

Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2, BB 117 was dedicated to the Hungarian violin virtuoso, Zoltán Székely, who requested the composition in 1936, and is a prime example of verbunkos style....

 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

The Berlin Philharmonic, German: , formerly Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester , is an orchestra based in Berlin, Germany. In 2006, a group of ten European media outlets voted the Berlin Philharmonic number three on a list of "top ten European Orchestras", after the Vienna Philharmonic and the...

 under Ferenc Fricsay

Ferenc Fricsay

Ferenc Fricsay was a Hungarian conductor. From 1960 until his death, he was an Austrian citizen.Fricsay was born in Budapest in 1914 and studied music under Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernst von Dohnányi, and Leo Weiner. Fricsay had a meteoric rise to fame, making his first appearance as a...

 is now legendary. Varga collaborated with eminent conductors such as Ernest Ansermet

Ernest Ansermet

Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...

, Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

, Karl Böhm

Karl Böhm

Karl August Leopold Böhm was an Austrian conductor. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century.- Education :...

, Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

, Ferenc Fricsay, Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...

, Igor Markevitch

Igor Markevitch

Igor Markevitch was a Ukrainian, Italian, and French composer and conductor.- Origin :Igor Markevich was born in Kiev, to an old family of Ukrainian Cossack starshyna ennobled in the 18th century...

, Georg Solti

Georg Solti

Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...

 and others. He performed with the greatest orchestras such as the Philharmonia Orchestra

Philharmonia Orchestra

The Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the leading orchestras in Great Britain, based in London. Since 1995, it has been based in the Royal Festival Hall. In Britain it is also the resident orchestra at De Montfort Hall, Leicester and the Corn Exchange, Bedford, as well as The Anvil, Basingstoke...

 London, and the Berlin Philharmonic. He also recorded profically for Deutsche Grammophon

Deutsche Grammophon

Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...

 and EMI

EMI

The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

.

Tibor Varga gave the premières of violin concertos by Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

, Alban Berg

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

 and Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

 throughout Europe and other continents. Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...

, Max Méreaux

Max Méreaux

Max Méreaux is a French composer. He was born in October 1946 at Saint-Omer, near Calais, where he took music lessons. After gaining his baccalaureate in philosophy he studied musical analysis at the Paris Conservatoire under Jacques Castérède....

, Matyas Seiber

Mátyás Seiber

Mátyás György Seiber was a Hungarian-born composer who lived and worked in England from 1935 onward.-Career:Seiber was born in Budapest, and studied there with Zoltán Kodály, with whom he toured Hungary collecting folk songs. In 1928, he became director of the jazz department at the Hoch...

, Jose de Almeida Prado and other composers dedicated works to him. Writing to Varga about a performance of his Violin Concerto, Arnold Schönberg wrote : "I wish to be younger to be able to write more music for you." His conducting career led to the establishment of a chamber orchestra bearing his name in Detmold

Detmold

Detmold is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, with a population of about 74,000. It was the capital of the small Principality of Lippe from 1468 until 1918 and then of the Free State of Lippe until 1947...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, in 1954 as well as that of the Festival Orchestra Tibor Varga in Sion

Sion, Switzerland

Sion is the capital of the Swiss canton of Valais. it had a population of .Landmarks include the Basilique de Valère and Château de Tourbillon. Sion has an airfield for civilian and military use, which, because of its location in a valley, causes a reasonable amount of noise pollution. FC Sion...

. He also co-founded at the Hochschule für Musik in Detmold a now-famous string department with cellist André Navarra

André Navarra

André-Nicolas Navarra was a French cellist and cello teacher.-Early life:...

 and violists Bruno Giuranna

Bruno Giuranna

Bruno Giuranna is an Italian violist.According to Giuranna's website:"Bruno Giuranna, born in Milan, completed his musical studies at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome receiving his diploma in violin and viola...

 and Nobuko Imai

Nobuko Imai

, is a Japanese classical violist with an extensive career as soloist and chamber musician. Since 1988 she plays an Andrea Guarneri of 1690.-Biography:...

.

In 1955, Tibor Varga settled in Switzerland, though maintaining his position in Detmold. In 1964, he founded the Tibor Varga Festival in Sion, the capital of the Canton of Valais in Switzerland, and founded an International Academy of Music in connection with it, specializing in interpretation (or "master") classes for accomplished young players conducted by leading soloists during the summer. In a typical year, the International Academy draws around 400 students to attend about 25 master classes. In addition, he added to the festival the annual International Violin Competition, one of the most prestigious of annual violin competitions, which attracts over 100 entrants a year. Previous winners include Jean-Jacques Kantorow

Jean-Jacques Kantorow

Jean-Jacques Kantorow is a French violin virtuoso and conductor.-Biography:Kantorow was born in Cannes, France. From the age of 13 he studied at the Paris Conservatoire with René Benedetti, and in 1960 won the first violin prize...

, Vadim Repin

Vadim Repin

Vadim Repin is a Belgian Russian violinist who currently lives in Austria....

 and Mirijam Contzen.

In 1984, Varga founded a string music department at the Conservatory of Sion. In 1991, this organization, under the name École Supérieure de Musique, separated from the Sion Conservatory to join the Fondation de l'Académie de Musique in Sion. The municipality of Sion put a magnificent older building at the disposal of the school. Within one year of the founding of the school, a leading music educator proclaimed the Varga school as "one of the three best professional violin academies in Europe." In 1998, it became a completely independent entity under the auspices of his own Foundation. In 2002 the École Supérieure de Musique merged with the Conservatory of Sion and became the Conservatoire Supérieur et Académie de Musique Tibor Varga. From its existence until 2002 Tibor Varga remained its director. It is a full time school specializing in string instrument training. About 50 students, from eight to twenty-five in age, are generally enrolled. Numerous graduates of the school are soloists, concertmasters, directors of international music competitions, festivals and master classes Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne

Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne

The Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne is a Swiss chamber orchestra based in Lausanne, Switzerland.The violinist and conductor Victor Desarzens founded the orchestra in 1942, and served as its first artistic director for 30 years...

 (Gyula Stuller), New Japan Philharmonic

New Japan Philharmonic

The is a symphony orchestra based in Tokyo, Japan. It was founded in 1972 with Seiji Ozawa as honorary conductor laureate. The Philharmonic's primary concert venue is the Sumida Triphony Hall. Since 2003, its music director is Christian Arming....

 (Tatsuo Nishie), Malta International Music Competition (Director-Volodymyr Baran), Violin and Friends International Music Festival, VFIMF Master Classes], Malta]] http://vfimf.com/ etc., and members of leading international-class orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic (Madeleine Carruzzo), Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala

La Scala

La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...

, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Staatskapelle Dresden, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin

The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin is an orchestra based in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1946 by American occupation forces as the RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester . It was also known as the American Sector Symphony Orchestra...

, New Japan and many others. The first female member to be admitted to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was a student of Varga.

Death

Tibor Varga died at his home in Grimisuat in Switzerland on 4 September 2003. He and his wife Judith, who predeceased him, had two children. Gilbert Varga, his son, is a noted conductor, and his daughter Susan Rybicki-Varga is a cellist and teacher.