Cecylia Arzewski

Cecylia Arzewski is a Polish (some would say American) violinist and teacher born (in Krakow, Poland) in 1948.  She is known for playing in some of the top U.S. orchestras as either Concertmaster or Associate Concertmaster, namely the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony, and the Atlanta Symphony.  Although a highly gifted orchestral violinist, her 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, Sydney Harth, Raymond Cohen, David Nadien, Richard Burgin, Simon Standage, Frank Almond, and Glenn Dicterow.  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, a violinist I had never heard of until now; he is better known as a Hungarian composer rather than violinist.  Arzewski later came to the U.S (probably 1960, though the year is not entirely certain) and studied with Ivan Galamian at Juilliard (New York) and Joseph Silverstein at the New England Conservatory (Boston.)  She also very briefly studied under Jascha Heifetz and Joseph Gingold.  She played in the Buffalo Philharmonic for one season – 1969 to 1970.  In 1970, at age 22, she joined the first violinist ranks of the Boston Symphony.  She then gradually moved up to the Assistant Concertmaster position, a position she reached in either 1978 or 1985 – sources differ.  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 Bach unaccompanied violin works.  From 1987 to 1990, she played as Associate Concertmaster in the Cleveland Orchestra.  Her tenure as Concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony began in 1990 and ended in 2008.  She has, of course, performed as soloist on many occasions with the Cleveland and Atlanta Symphonies.  She played the Wieniawski concerto in her first appearance with the Atlanta Symphony in 1990 and the Prokofiev second concerto in her last in 2003.  Today, she devotes herself to solo playing and is also the Artistic Director of the North Georgia Chamber Music Festival.  I do not know what violin she plays.  There are several posts of her playing on YouTube – here is one of them, the Strauss Sonata, said to be one of the best violin sonatas ever written.