Tibor Varga – both as violinist and conductor – may be considered as a pivotal figure in 20th century music. Creator of a new style of violin playing, he is in addition the author of an outstanding violin method of highest efficiency, hitherto unparalleled.

Immediately after the War Varga, in his home town Györ, was co-founder and first professor, at the age of 24, of a Music Academy associated to the Budapest Franz Liszt Academy. In 1949 he became professor at the newly founded Detmold High School of Music (Germany). Charged to establish the String Department, for which he was asked to become the head, Tibor Varga, together with André Navarra and Bruno Giuranna, created a string school of world renown. In 1988 the High School of Music (Ecole Supérieure de Musique, now part of the Lausanne University of Music) exclusively dedicated to the training of professional string players was born at Sion, with its founder Tibor Varga responsible as both artistic and teaching director.). Students were coming there from all over the world to complete their musical and artistic development amongst well-known artists and teachers.

Since the end of the 1940s Varga also directed master classes at Darmstadt (Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik), London, Paris, Salzburg (Mozarteum), Siena (Accademia Musicale Chigiana) and other musical centres in Europe and the USA (Boston, Los Angeles, Fort Worth, Indiana …), giving furthermore public lectures on musical themes.

In 1963, a Summer Music Academy (Académie de Musique) was established at Sion (CH). With yearly more than 400 students in different musical disciplines, it is one of the most important Academies in Europe.

Since the 1950s Varga has equally been jury member or president in the leading international competitions for Violin and Chamber Music. In 1967, he founded the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition considered to be one of the most exacting competitions in the world (more than 100 laureats, among them Mirijam Contzen, Latica Honda-Rosenberg, Nam Yun Kim, Boris Kuschnir, Ji-Yoon Park, Vadim Repin and Alexandru Tomescu).

In addition, Varga was an artistic and pedagogic adviser in the service of the ministries of culture in France and Portugal. Since October 2002 he held a chair for violin at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz (Austria).

Varga’s former students, among them prize-winners of important International Music Competitions, have become soloists, members of the world’s leading orchestras and professors in distinguished Music Universities. Nam Yun Kim (Seoul) and Sherry Kloss (USA), assistant of Jascha Heifetz, were also students of Tibor Varga, as well as Madeleine Carruzzo, who, under the ovations of the international press, became the very first female member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.