Conductor Edward Cumming, the HSO, and accomplished pianist Matei Varga were in perfect accord, achieving a fine balance between the brilliant passages for piano that are embedded within the enormous orchestral scaffold. Varga won the hearts of the audience with his masterful command of the delicate passages as well as those more pyrotechnical moments, a sweet smile on his face and fire at his fingertips.

Elegant and restrained... clever and effective... Varga won over the Hartford audience [who] greeted him with a standing ovation.

At the beginning and end of his hour-long recital last night, Matei Varga apologized for appearing the same night as the Super Bowl. But it was noted with such good humor–with the packed house at Poisson Rouge obviously not caring the least bit about about football–that this only endeared the youthful artist even more.

Perhaps only in Poisson Rouge are serious performers allowed to interact with listeners. Usually the comments are platitudinous. But Mr. Varga was so informative, anecdotal and self-deprecating that it only enriched the concert.

But this comes later. Most important was his program–a program apparently put together with the help of fellow pianist Radu Lupu–and his performance.

Frankly, I had never seen such an interesting concordance of music. The four works, written within 12 years of each other, were from four different Central European countries. Each of them exhibited, what Mr. Varga described as “the ultimate gloom, the mistiness of this part of the world”.

All the works shared not only that sense of melancholy, those quirky rhythms, those spontaneous unrelated outbursts or tics or hammer-blows, but they even shared notational relationships. Mr. Varga noted how the last movement of the Bartók had the same notes as the beginning ot the Szymanowski. It was equally apparent that the first measures of the Janácek were mirror images of the last movement by Enesco.

Something in the waters? A mineral in the Carpathians? Who knows?

The 30-year-old Mr. Varga has a lifetime to explore the meaning of his heritage. And already, the meaning of his music was ear-boggling, for he is a fearless performer.

A program for two pianos, of the kind which is rarely heard in Paris, has united South African pianist Ben Schoeman and Matei Varga, who is one of the young Romanian talents recognized throughout the West after having won several international competitions.

The program is intense and captivating, a kind of nutshell of romantic piano. Endowed with a brilliant technique and a genuine stage charisma which spiced up the performance, the two pianists played a 4-hand Schubert - lyric, solemn and troubling at the same time. After a series of variations similar to a reverie, the duo presented "Three Dances" by Dinu Lipatti in a very lively key, full of dramatic accents.

The evening’s climax, Rachmaninov’s Suite no 2 (and especially the Romance and its voluble interlaces), showed two pianists with complementary personalities, sometimes even melding together, who revealed both the whole and the detail. While never overly emphasizing their flawless craft, they managed to take us far into the composer’s intimate world. (…) As a duo, they are amazing in their individuality and shared musical intuition.

Matei Varga, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall

Mr. Varga plays with maturity and command far beyond what one expects from the average contest winner. He possesses an expressive power that reflects much more than good teaching: his every phrase conveyed intelligence and a burning sense of musical mission.

Opening with a masterful account of Beethoven’s Andante Favori, the oft-forgotten relative of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, Mr. Varga played with consummate care and fidelity without ever sounding fussy or pedantic. Supporting this reviewer’s theory that audiences actually can discern such subtle refinement, listeners were rapt, utterly motionless and silent.

Schumann’s Fantasie in C major, Op. 17, followed and was equally impressive. As one might expect, all the technical nuts and bolts were under perfect control (including the infamous treacherous leaps), but more importantly there was clearly an exceptional mind at work.

Mr. Varga returned with two valuable contributions after intermission, C.P.E. Bach’s Keyboard Sonata Wq 55/4, and Enescu’s Piano Sonata No. 1. The Bach , an unusual choice, was played with overall polish and control. In the Enescu, Varga showed tremendous dynamic range [...] arguing well on behalf of the work’s more frequent inclusion in the repertoire. An Enescu encore concluded an evening that showed promise of great things ahead.

The crowning jewel of the festival was the final event - presenting both Chopin’s piano concerti - in the Atheneum Hall with the “Universitaria” orchestra conducted by Alexandru Ganea. [One of the soloists was] Matei Varga who, through his spellbinding art of piano magic and sheer poetry, transported the audience in Chopin’s world.

Matei Varga shone in Schumann’s highly expressive Fantasy and Mihai Maniceanu’s explosive novelty – The Living.

The passionate Matei Varga brought a sensuous richness and painful longing to Schumann’s Fantasie. The March in the middle of this hidden Sonata unfolded with brilliance and evoked a noble chivalry.

On Sunday, May 17, Romanian pianist Matei Varga appeared as a guest for the Heritage Concert Society.

This brilliant and energetic young musician served up a strenuous program that consisted of, among other things, two major works. He began with a sonata by C.P.E. Bach, the second and best-known of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach. (…) The technique was clean, articulate, and perfectly fluid – in short, delightful!

Then came the Schubert Impromptu in G flat (…). Here was heard all the sweetness and underlying sadness in Schubert, a kind of reaching into the soul. And Varga brought out the depth of the melancholy with subtlety and grace – it was exquisitely played.

Next was the Grieg sonata in E minor... [which] is impressive in its technical demands, and this pianist seemed completely warmed into it.

The second half of the program featured two choices that were surprisingly ambitious – one would have thought no pianist willing to risk the Enesco Sonata in F sharp minor and the Ravel “Scarbo” on the same program, much less the same half. (…) The final movement [of the Sonata] stood out because of the ethereal, almost other-worldly quality of the mood and the sound elicited from the piano by Varga. Again, the technical demands were accomplished with apparent ease, but we must never underestimate the investment of time and energy needed to reach that level of mastery.

And finally, to speak of pianistic sound, it is said that Walter Gieseking considered Ravel’s “Scarbo” to be the most difficult piece ever written for the piano. This was the concluding selection, and indeed, a technical tour de force.

The audience was again astonished and delighted at the power, control, and musicianship of this gifted young artist. There is no doubt that he has a bright future!

In Chopin’s second piano concerto, Matei Varga excelled in finding endless nuances and delicate emotions, meanwhile finding within himself the power to express the depth and inner struggle of the piece.

Matei Varga's performance was powerful, calm, intelligently structured, variously shaded and tuned.

What joy! How genuine and refined… no need to mention the skill, since Matei Varga currently represents a school whose foundation is built upon the concept that the athleticism of the performance comes without saying and should always be put in the service of the highest artistic message. We witnessed a performer freed of any constraints given by the multitude of notes or any stylistic “traps”. There was no moment of cheap sentimentality and, though highly personal, his rendition became a subtle combination of ingredients which generated true human emotion of the most contemporary kind. Varga was romantic, translucid, playful but above all he was concentrated on the greater picture…