Robert Verebes was an award-winning Hungarian violist who was based out of Montreal for much of his life, and performed all over the world.
Born in Budapest, Verebes began violin lessons at age 7. At 15, he was accepted to the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. He initially studied violin under Desző Rados, and later took up the viola with Professor Paul Lukacs. When he was 19, Verebes became a founding member of the Bela Bartok String Quartet of Budapest. With this ensemble, he performed in several European cities, recording Bartok’s 3rd and 6th quartet in Paris in 1956.
After the Hungarian Revolution, Verebes immigrated to Canada and almost immediately received a scholarship to the Marlborough Music Festival (Vermont, USA) and an invitation to join the Ottawa Philharmonic Orchestra as first violist. During his two years in Ottawa, he founded the New Chamber Music Ensemble and performed numerous recitals and chamber music concerts.
Verebes joined the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1959. For the next 40 years, he was alternately second solo violist or first violist. He was well known to audiences through his solo recitals in Canada, the US, Paris, London, Oxford, Budapest, Tokyo, Shanghai, Buenos Aires and Damascus.
As a soloist, Verebes has been featured with several orchestras in Canada, the US and China. In addition to the standard solo viola repertoire, he inspired a number of composers to write for him, or dedicate their compositions to him, including Lothar Klein (“Concerto Sacro”) and Jean Coulthard (“Symphonic Ode.”) As a chamber musician, he founded and performed with several ensembles. He recorded over 100 programs for the CBC and won the prestigious Anik Award with the Classical Quartet of Montreal. He was a founding member of Musica Camerata, and the concert series Robert Verebes et ses Amis.
Verebes was a professor of viola and chamber music at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montreal for 23 years. He also taught at several summer music camps and gave master classes in Canada, the US, China and the Middle East. He has recorded 3 LPs and 8 CDs of his solo viola repertoire, and his CDs were uploaded to YouTube in 2016.
