Press Reviews
Andrew Quint, THE ABSOLUTE SOUND
"Varga has a monster technique—check out his performance of Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude in C Minor, Op. 10, No.12—and all of his interpretations are fully idiomatic.."Read more »
Stephen Wright, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
"Varga has the ideally light and velvety touch and delicately suave phrasing to tease the maximum charm out of every piece."Adam Sherkin, THE WHOLE NOTE
"An eclectic, highly personal recording... Varga’s signature pianism is apt in arguing for seemingly disparate musical threads. More of a recital program than a thematically directed album, The Year That Never Was nonetheless achieves satisfaction, executed with much joy and a tasteful, rollicking fondness for this personalized set list."Lisa MacKinney, LIMELIGHT
"With his infectious enthusiasm and seemingly effortless technique, Varga makes light work of soaring leaps, cascading runs at breakneck speed and delightful trills, all with precise attention to detail.."Read more »
Rafael de Acha, ALL ABOUT THE ARTS
"Throughout one hour of music that straddles the salon with the “seriously” traditional, the extraordinary Matei Varga is welcomed back, playing idiomatically as to the manner born with a cool brain and a warm heart, letting the music of Lecuona and his predecessors resonate eloquently in a treasurable collection of music for the piano, assembled after months of isolation imposed on the artist and on all of us by unfortunate circumstances."David McDade, MusicWeb-International
"Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu is given a splendidly glowering outing that anchors things with just the right amount of gravitas… This is meant to be music making to revive the mood and all I can say is: Mission accomplished! If the combined assault of war, inflation and a post Covid world are getting too much for you, I can enthusiastically prescribe a course of this joyous disc.”Read more »
textura.org
"Regardless of the composer in play, Varga elevates the set... with one ebullient and effervescent performance after another, his playing dazzling throughout and for Rondo alla Crazy and Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu Op. 66 in C-sharp minor virtuosic... Varga's range is such that he can shift from Tudor's high-spirited rondo to the tenderness of Balakirev's Spanish Melody in a flash... A stimulating and rapidly changing presentation."Read more »
Göran Forsling, MUSICWEB-INTERNATIONAL
"... the Revolutionary Etude offered three minutes of intense drama. Beethoven’s immortal Für Elise, finely nuanced, was a surprising encore squeezed in between Gershwin and Lecuona... [Andrei] Tudor’s funny Rondo alla Crazy [will become] a future encore classic!"Read more »
Jed Distler, GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE
"Varga taps into the expressive sound world of Janacek's In the Mists, employing ample rubato and generally measured tempos. Indeed he transforms the Andantino into a moody tone poem... The pianist closes with the Adagio from the Bach D Minor concerto after Marcello. The gentle inward reading realizes Varga's soothing, calming intention... [A] a beautifully executed and engineered achievement, that does this talented young pianist proud."Read more »
Joshua Kosman, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"[A] grand and wonderfully lugubrious new release from the young Romanian pianist Matei Varga... [Dumitrescu's] nine piano preludes recorded here are largely vivacious and full of dense keyboard intricacies that Varga exploits splendidly... Janácek’s swirling, Impressionist masterpiece...gets an appealingly fluid performance. The slow movement of Bach’s D-Minor Concerto...closes out the disc like a serene funeral benediction."Read more »
BBC MUSIC
“Varga's poignant homage to composers who died far too young includes delightful world premieres by Romanian pianist Dinu Lipatti."Rob Haskins, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
"The performances are exquisite... they show a fine sense of shaping a lyrical melodic line with perfect tonal control"Rafael de Acha, RAFAEL'S MUSIC NOTES
“Make no mistake, this artist is not yet another dazzling firebrand eagerly ready for his next interview and photo-op combo, but a deeply serious musician well in the midst of a major career."Read more »
Dominy Clements, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL
"Matei Varga pours as much emotion into [this] performance as I can recall hearing before on record... his ideas are powerful and convincing... [He] has certainly given us much of himself on this excellent recording, and it deserves a place on the shelf of any collection of fine piano music."Read more »
Alex Baran, THE WHOLE NOTE (Toronto)
“Varga’s performance of their work is a welcome document on great talents we might have watched grow into towering maturity. Tudor Dumitrescu, for example, killed at the age of 19 in the 1997 earthquake that struck Bucharest, was, by a few recorded accounts, another Van Cliburn. His 7 Preludes, Preludes in C Sharp Minor and B Minor are heartfelt works revealing a fluid writing style, and profound understanding of his instrument. His emotional maturity is striking.”Read more »
Ana-Maria Botnaru, WEBCULTURA.RO (Romania)
“…[Dumitrescu’s] 7 Preludes, as performed by Matei Varga, represent a musical, cultural and spiritual restitution, of the most overwhelming kind. Deeply influenced by Tudor Dumitrescu’s genius and his tragic destiny, Varga earns him a place among the immortals… This disc is not just a musical project - it is a symbolic gesture, deep and serious, of outstanding importance… Varga, an exceptional performer who is himself touched by genius, fully understands Dumitrescu and Lipatti, and makes them his own…”Read more »
Robert Gottlieb, THE NEW YORK OBSERVER
"[an] excellent pianist"Wolfgang Schreiber, SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
"Magical." - on Mr. Varga’s performance of Schumann’s Fantasy op. 17Jeffrey Johnson, HARTFORD COURANT
"Varga won over the Hartford audience... and they greeted him with a standing ovation"Enescu Festival News
"Explosive . . . [He is] the greatest young Romanian pianist. . . . [He] astonished the audience."Ana von Bulow, DIE NEUE MUSIKZEITUNG
"[Michael Hersch]’s insanely difficult ten part piano concerto . . . gave the Romanian pianist Matei Varga, who lives in New York, the opportunity to deliver a brilliant, highly emotional and virtuosic performance that fascinated the audience for forty minutes."Harry Rolnick, CONCERTONET
"[T]he meaning of his music was ear-boggling, for he is a fearless performer. . . . dazzling assurance . . . incredible octave passages . . . magical . . . luminous. . . . Like a metaphor of Mr. Varga’s picture of Central Europe, tragic, soulful, ebullient, offering life and death as a touching ensemble."Lynn Rene Bayley, FANFARE
"…Varga’s playing is consistently sensitive, flowing, and resonant, which suits these particular pieces very well… he clearly has an affinity to these specific works and has thought them through very well before committing them to disc. It is, in a word, selfless playing, in which he is giving us the music and not his personality, and I for one find that refreshing." - on the George Enescu album (Naxos 2010)Alan Becker, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
"Varga tears into the sinew of this music with greater bite and forcefulness" - on the George Enescu album (Naxos 2010)Jerry Dubins, FANFARE
"This is more than a musical partnership; it’s two lives that depend on each other, and it’s an absolutely thrilling, breathtaking marvel to behold. Varga is so fantastic, and so is Buruiana, that they both deserve top billing." - on the Brahms Cello Sonatas album (Coviello Classics, 2012)Berliner Morgenpost
"Matei Varga shone in Schumann’s highly expressive Fantasy and Mihai Maniceanu’s explosive novelty."Rorianne Schrade, NEW YORK CONCERT REVIEW
"[H]is every phrase conveyed intelligence and a burning sense of musical mission. . . . Mr. Varga played with consummate care and fidelity without ever sounding fussy or pedantic . . . listeners were rapt, utterly motionless and silent. . . . there was clearly an exceptional mind at work."Brian Reinhart, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL
"Laura Metcalf and Matei Varga make for superb company. Their partnership is utterly natural, as one would expect from performers who have collaborated for over a decade." - on the album First Day (Sono Luminus, 2016)Audience Testimonials
