Vadym Stetsenko
Vadym Stetsenko was a Ukrainian violinist, musicologist, and music educator. He was born on 15 April 1914 in Holovo-Rusava, Yampol Uyezd, Podolia Governorate, then part of the Russian Empire and now within the village of Oleksandrivka in Vinnytsia Oblast. He was the son of Kyrylo Stetsenko and lost his father at the age of eight.
Stetsenko completed school in Kyiv in 1928 and graduated from a music technical school there in 1932. In 1936 he completed his studies at the Kyiv Conservatory in David Berthier's violin class, then undertook postgraduate study with Andriy Olkhovsky. He also taught violin at the Kyiv Secondary Specialized Music School.
From 1939 to 1941, he performed as an ensemble musician. In 1940 he defended his candidate dissertation, The Origins of the Violin Concerto, which was published in a revised form as a monograph in 1980.
He taught at the Kyiv Conservatory in 1940–1941 and 1942–1943. In 1943 he left for Poland and subsequently Czechoslovakia, arriving in Lviv in 1946. He played in the orchestra of the Lviv Opera and, from 1947 to 1959, taught at the Lviv Conservatory, where he headed the violin department.
Stetsenko later returned to Kyiv and taught at the Kyiv Conservatory for the rest of his life; from 1973 to 1979 he again headed its violin department. His publications included Principles of Intonation on the Violin (1977) and Methods of Teaching Violin Playing (1980; reissued in 1982). His students included Arkady Vinokurov.
For many years, Stetsenko preserved his father's musical and other archives, transferring them to the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine between 1968 and 1973. Three of his children, including the violinist Kyrylo Stetsenko Jr., and three of his grandchildren also became musicians. He died in Kyiv on 30 March 1984.