Cecilia Aritzi Sobrino

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Pianist, composer, and pedagogue who became familiar with all styles and forms of European universal music of her time.

She was born in Loma del Ángel, in the City of La Habana. Her mother was Teresa Sobrino and her father was pianist Fernando Arizti. From their marriage, besides Cecilia, two more daughters were born: María Teresa and Felicia.

From childhood she demonstrated great musical aptitudes, creating some melodies on the piano. Her first musical studies—solfège and theory—were conducted with maestro Francisco Fuentes and piano with her father. Later she became a student of pianist, composer, and Cuban pedagogue Nicolás Ruiz Espadero, who trained her in the piano works of classics and romantics such as Mozart, Lizst, and Beethoven. Together with her father and with Espadero.

At eighteen years of age she began producing works of importance. The artistic and intellectual environment in which she developed throughout her life was exceptional.

Her parents' mansion, at Calle Tulipán No. 14 between Santa Catalina and Falgueras, in Cerro, La Habana, was famous in its time for its frequent artistic soirées and where she related closely with Cuban and foreign musical and intellectual figures.

She offered some concerts in the hall of Anselmo López and at the Centro Gallego, in the City of La Habana. In 1896, residing in the city of New York, she performed with notable success at Carnegie Hall. With the exception of some works for Piano Trio, violin, and cello, she conceived all of her work for the piano, an instrument which she mastered perfectly and in which one clearly perceives the influence of Chopin and Schumann and other composers of the nineteenth-century European era.

From 1887 onwards she published in New York and in France a series of compositions for piano: two Scherzos, Nocturnes, Reverie, Impromptu, and a Dance.

Among her best-known works of her time is her Trio for piano, violin, and cello, premiered by the author on November 20, 1893 in Salón López, together with Cuban violinist Rafael Diaz Albertini and cellist Rafael Ortega. It is considered the first work of its kind written by a Cuban woman in the nineteenth century.

In the field of teaching, she wrote a manual of exercises for the piano and taught private classes and at the Conservatory of Carlos Peyrellade, in La Habana.

Barcarola, Mazurka, Impromptu, Slow Waltz, Two Scherzos, Reverie, Brilliant Waltz, Dance, Romance, Nocturne, Ballad, Fantastic Dance, Berceuse, Peasant Song, Religious Andante, Third Scherzo, Improvisation, and Daily Exercises for Piano (piano technique).

She died on June 30, 1930 in the City of La Habana.