António Pinho Vargas

Composer. He holds a degree in History from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto. He completed the Piano Course at the Porto Conservatory in 1987 and the Composition Course at the Rotterdam Conservatory in 1990, where he studied with Klaas de Vries as a grant holder of the Gulbenkian Foundation between 1987 and 1990. He was Coordinating Professor of Composition at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (1991-2019) and Collaborating Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra.
In 1995, he was decorated by the President of the Portuguese Republic with the Commendation of the Order of Infante D. Henrique.

In 2012, he received the University of Coimbra Prize for his work and also the José Afonso Prize. In 2014, he received the SPA’s Prize for his work Magnificat for choir and orchestra. He has published Sobre Música: ensaios, textos e entrevistas (Afrontamento, 2002), Cinco Conferências sobre a História da Música do Século XX (Culturgest, 2008), and from his doctoral thesis, Música e Poder: para uma sociologia da ausência da música portuguesa no contexto europeu (Almedina, 2011).

As a pianist/composer, he has recorded 9 albums: Outros Lugares (1983), Cores e Aromas (1985), As folhas novas mudam de cor (1987), Os Jogos do Mundo (1989), Selos e Borboletas (1991), A Luz e a Escuridão (1996), and the double CDs Solo (2008), Solo II (2009), and Improvisações (2011).

From 1995 onward, numerous recordings of his works have been released and reissued. Monodia was first released by EMI Classics in 1995 and was later reissued by Warner. In 2014, Naxos released Requiem & Judas, performed by the Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra, and also digitally re-released the opera Os Dias Levantados—with a libretto by Manuel Gusmão and featuring 8 soloists, the Choir of the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, and the Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa under the direction of João Paulo Santos. This was followed by Verses and Nocturnes in 2015. The year 2017 saw the release of Magnificat | De Profundis, featuring the Gulbenkian Choir and the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa conducted by Cesário Costa, as well as the Violin Concerto performed by Tamila Kharambura with the same orchestra under Garry Walker on the MPMP label. More recently, the 2023 album Lamentos—performed by the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa conducted by Pedro Neves, with soloists Ana Pereira (violin) and Joana Cipriano (viola) on the Artway Next label—won the Play Melhor Álbum de Música Clássica/Erudita Award and the SPA Pedro Osório Award in 2025. The album Oscuro & Six Portraits of Pain was also released on Artway in 2025.

He has composed 4 operas, 5 oratorios, 14 pieces for orchestra, 10 works for ensemble, 26 chamber music works, 11 works for soloists, and music for 5 films. Among the most recent works are Requiem (2012), Magnificat (2013), De Profundis (2014), Violin Concerto (2015), Viola Concerto (2016), Memorial (2018), (Subjective) Symphony (2019), Oscuro (2022), Collections & translations (…varianti…) (2024), Notebooks (2024), … details… (string trio) 2025, and Dissolves me into geometrics (percussions) (2025).