BY KAREN BOSSICK
An award-winning Romanian pianist who has won superlative reviews around the world will offer a free concert at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, April 6, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
Matei Varga, the 2021 recipient of the Romanian-American Fine Arts Award conferred by the Romanian government will perform an array of classical numbers.
He has appeared as a soloist in many of the world’s leading concert halls, including Carnegie and the Alice Tully Hall in New York, the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing and top recital halls in Berlin, Barcelona, Bucharest, Geneva, Jerusalem and Paris.
He is frequently accompanied by the Romanian soprano Mariana Nicolesco and has performed with the Romanian National Radio Orchestra, the Hartford Symphony and others.
Critics have described his performances as “magical” and “colorful, vivacious and engaging,” MusicWeb-International raved about his latest recording, “The Year That Never Was”: “This is meant to be music making to revive the mood.”
Varga received a “High Commendation” by Diana, Princess of Wales in 1994 and he has received several other prizes, including the Virtuoso at the 2003 Vendome Prize in Lisbon.