|
The Polish-born American violinist and teacher, Cecylia Arzewski, began her violin studies in Poland at age 5. One of her first teachers was Eugenia Uminska at the Krakow Music Academy. Four years later (1957), she and her family moved to Israel where she was enrolled at the Tel Aviv Conservatory. Her principal teacher there was Odeon Partos. Arzewski later came to the USA (probably 1960) and studied with Ivan Galamian at Juilliard School of Music in New York City and in Meadowmount and with Joseph Silverstein at the New England Conservatory in Boston. She also very briefly studied under Jascha Heifetz and Joseph Gingold.
Cecylia Arzewski played in the Buffalo Philharmonic for one season 1969-. In 1970, at age 22, she joined the first violinist ranks of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She then gradually moved up to the Assistant Concertmaster position, a position she reached in 1978 or 1985. Subsequent to receiving a prize at the Bach International Competition in Leipzig, she played a debut recital in New York at Carnegie Hall in 1978. The program consisted entirely of J.S. Bach unaccompanied violin works. From 1987 to 1990, she played as Associate Concertmaster in the Cleveland Orchestra. She was Concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra from 1990 to 2008. She has, of course, performed as soloist on many occasions with the Cleveland Orchestra and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. She played the Wieniawski concerto in her first appearance with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in 1990 and the Prokofiev second concerto in her last in 2003. She retired from her position with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in order to devote her time to the recording of J.S. Bach's monumental Sonatas and Partitas (BWV 1001-1006). Today, she devotes herself to solo playing and is also the Artistic Director of the North Georgia Chamber Music Festival.
Although a highly gifted orchestral violinist, Cecylia Arzewski’s solo repertoire is very extensive - in fact, as extensive as almost any concert artist’s. The tradition of the concertmaster-soloist reaches as far back as William DeFesch and Leopold Mozart. More recent examples of this tradition are Rodolphe Kreutzer, Ferdinand David, Joseph Joachim, Ferdinand Laub, Eugene Ysaye, Max Bendix, Karl Halir, Theodore Spiering, Louis Persinger, Abram Shtern, Steven Staryk, Albert Sammons, Hugh Bean, Calvin Sieb, Sidney Harth, Raymond Cohen, David Nadien, Richard Burgin, Simon Standage, Frank Almond, and Glenn Dicterow. |
