Born in Hungary in 1974, Gábor Varga studied at the University of Szeged and the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, graduating in 1996 and 1998 respectively. He obtained his postgraduate degree from the Conservatoire de Paris in 2002.
His professional orchestral career began in 1995 when he was hired as principal clarinet in the Györ Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1996 he became principal clarinet in Concerto Budapest and, since 1997, he has held the same position in the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Between 2005 and 2007 he worked in that same position in the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. He has also worked assiduously in the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra since 2001.
Winner of several national (in 1985, 1988 and 1992) and international (1994, 1995 and 2001) awards, he has played in more than 25 countries around the world (United States, Canada, Peru, Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore, United Kingdom, France, Spain and Italy, among others) and has been a soloist in concert halls such as the Musikverein in Vienna and the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, including participations in various music festivals and the most prestigious clarinet festivals.
As a fervent advocate of contemporary music, he has premiered several works of chamber music and has commissioned many concerts to leading composers such as M. Patterson, Kovács, Fekete, Szentpàli and Vajda, and constantly seeks opportunities to bring contemporary music closer to the Hungarian public, such as Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Sonata and Thea Musgrave’s Clarinet Concerto.
His recordings include several works of chamber music and concertos by Weber and Mozart for Hungarian radio and CD recordings of Nielsen’s Concerto, Kovàcs’ Dreamdances, Drusetzky’s chamber music and Vajda’s clarinet works.
He often gives masterclasses in Europe, Asia, North America and South America at leading universities (Beijing, Katowice, London, etc.) and at the ICA and ECA clarinet festivals. His teaching career began at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest in 2001 as an assistant. In 2006 he was a professor at NAFA in Singapore. In 2014, he joined the faculty of the University of Debrecen in eastern Hungary, although in that same year he was appointed Professor of Clarinet at the Tibor Varga Faculty of Musical Arts at the University of Györ.
Between 2017 and 2019, he worked in the International Chair of Clarinet at the RNCM in Manchester, where later in 2019 he was appointed “clarinet tutor.”
Since 2022, he has been an adjunct professor of clarinet in Bloomington, Indiana, at the Jacobs School of Music.