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Michal Kaznowski cello


In 1979 when Michal Kaznowski took up the post of principal cello in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra working with Simon Rattle, he was then the youngest principal cello in the country to accept such a senior position. Performing various concertos with the orchestra including a BBC broadcast Don Quixote, he shared the early development of the orchestra as Simon Rattle turned it into one of the UK's leading orchestras.

This followed on from being principal cello of the Sadlers Wells Royal ballet and associate principal position in the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra. Since leaving the CBSO in 1983 for what became the Maggini quartet, he has been principal cello of the New London Orchestra and in demand as a principal and guest principal cello for many of the leading freelance orchestras in London and the provinces.

His teachers were Maurice Gendron at the Menuhin School (including visiting teachers Nadia Boulanger and Yehudi Menuhin), Florence Hooton at the Royal Academy of Music (where he won the major cello prize), and André Navarra in Germany, (as a German Government Scholarship winner). He also performs outside the quartet as soloist with many orchestras, as a broadcast recitalist, as well as chamber music concerts with other artists including Peter Donohoe.

He is a staff cello teacher at the Purcell School and in the past was the senior cello teacher at Birmingham Conservatoire. He has also taught at Wells Cathedral Music School in collaboration with Amaryllis Flemming and Margaret Moncrieff, taught at the Junior Royal College of Music and also at Birmingham and Southampton Universities. He was appointed an ARAM in 1991 for his work in the Quartet, and is also an Honorary Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University and Brunel University. Michal Kaznowski plays on an Italian cello, made in 1776 in Genoa by Jacobus Philippus Cordanus.