Lenuta Ciulei

Acclaimed in 22 countries on four continents, the Romanian-born violinist Lenuta Ciulei started her brilliant career at age 9, appearing live on Romanian national television.  She began the violin at age 5, studying with Stefan Gheorghiu, Andre Gertler, Raphael Druian, and Ruggiero Ricci.  Her distinctive and imaginative style continues a unique combination of the great violinistic traditions of the renowned artists and pedagogues George Enescu, David Oistrach, and Eugene Ysaye.

Praised by the public and critics alike for the fine balance among her technique, accuracy, emotion, and imagination, Ms. Ciulei has been described as “an angel singing,” and “passionately abandoning herself to music.”  She has an unusually versatile repertoire, featuring masterworks from the early Baroque to the latest contemporary music.

Ms. Ciulei won first prize in the Niccolo Paganini International Violin Competition (Genoa, Italy), as well as the Tibor Varga (Sion, Switzerland) and Michelangelo Abbado (Sondrio, Italy) International Violin Competitions.

Ms. Ciulei tours extensively as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician.  In Europe, Asia, and North and South America, she has performed as soloist with major orchestras and appeared in radio and TV broadcasts,.  She has played at such prestigious festivals as the Bayreuth Festival (Germany), Marlboro Music Festival (Vermont), Carmel Bach Festival (California), George Enescu International Festival (Bucharest), Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Connecticut), and Grand Teton Music Festival (Wyoming).  She has given master classes for international festivals, orchestras, and universities in the U.S., Venezuela, and Europe.  She performed for the United Nations Great Assembly at the UN Palace in Geneva, the Bartok Memorial House in Budapest, the Great Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, and Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.  When she played in Madrid for the Spanish royal family, the El Pais newspaper named her “one of the greatest European violinists of the younger generation.”

For her exceptional career, Ms. Ciulei has received the 1994 Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Fellowship Solo Recitalist Award, and, in 1996, the Cultural Order Rio Grande by the President of the Federal Republic of Brazil.