Stanislaw Barcewicz

Stanisław Barcewicz was a Polish violinist, conductor and teacher. He was born in Warsaw in 1858, and first studied violin at the Institute of Music there under Apollinaire de Kontski and Władysław Gorski. At the age of 11 he publicly performed Beriot's Violin Concerto No. 7 in G major. He then studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers were Ferdinand Laub, Jan Hřímalý and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. He graduated in 1876 with a Gold Medal. He then toured Europe extensively, including appearances in Paris, Leipzig, Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, London, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Russia, and Riga. He was valued primarily for his interpretations of works by Henryk Wieniawski and Felix Mendelssohn. He also premiered works by his teacher Tchaikovsky, including the Polish premiere of the Violin Concerto in D. He played on a Guadagnini violin. In 1885, he became the concertmaster and second conductor of the Warsaw Opera. He occasionally conducted operas there, and he also conducted the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1886, he was appointed violin and viola professor at the Warsaw Conservatory, and was the institution's Director from 1910 to 1918, succeeding Emil Młynarski. Among his pupils in Warsaw can be mentioned Mieczysław Karłowicz, Grzegorz Fitelberg, Pyotr Stolyarsky, Henryk Gold, Aleksander Jabłoński, Paul Godwin, and Józef Ozimiński. He also founded and led the Warsaw String Quartet from 1892 until his death, and he also played in a renowned piano trio with the Polish pianist Aleksander Michałowski and the Russian cellist Aleksandr Verzhbilovich. In 1902 his former pupil Mieczysław Karłowicz wrote his Violin Concerto in A major, Op. 8 for Barcewicz, who premiered it on 21 March 1903 with the Berlin Philharmonic under the composer. Barcewicz died in Warsaw in 1929, aged 71. He was buried at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.