chamber music revisited

As Cowley Orchestra reconvened outdoors this week in much-reduced force just sufficient for duos and trios, I revisited the chamber music scores the young cellist and I prepared many years ago for our duo adventures. As the Flash previews which I embedded in the relevant blog entries at the time are no longer working (at least not on my computer), this is a new list I've prepared to have the playable ones handy (the noteflight list also includes some projects that didn't quite succeed or didn't get finished, although the "likes" added by users give you an impression of what works and what doesn't, I'm putting the more popular ones first in the list below).

Beethoven 3 duets (written for clarinet and bassoon originally):
1.1. Allegro comodo in C (video flute and cello)
1.3. Rondo in C
2.2. Rondo in Dm (video clarinet and cello)

JS Bach
Bourree in e minor, from the lute suite (the famous bourree used by many people including Jethro Tull)

Dvorak
Adagio (from the cello concerto)
Humoreske

Haydn
Menuet and trio (This was the first duet we performed, very basic stuff, and I probably still managed to make mistakes.)

Faure
Sicilienne (op78) This looks ok and we did perform it, not sure why it didn't get any likes.

Unfinished work: One of my favourite pieces for cello and flute to listen to is the Trio (op 78) by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, but unfortunately the piano has quite a prominent role in it. We made an effort to kick out the piano and arrange the piece for cello and flute alone, but never quite got it to a presentable shape.
First movement
Second movement (its a theme with variations, but we only got one of the variations done)

own photo

PS (27.5.2021) Now beginning to add YouTube links of professional performances to each of the pieces.

rondo from Beethoven duo No 2

Here comes a new chamber music score we've prepared for cello (grade 7+) and flute (hopeless, i.e. me). It's the third movement of the second duet from Beethoven's three duets which I think were originally written for clarinet and bassoon.

PS (July 2015): We've now performed this at a street party and made a tentative recording - not good enough for sharing yet but getting there. Meanwhile, here is a clarinet/cello duo playing the piece exactly twice as fast as we do (as a listener I prefer our speed, it allows me to actually understand what's going on in the music).

sicilienne

The Sicilienne by Gabriel Fauré is a popular repertoire piece for both flautists and cellists, but here comes the version for cello and (a somewhat less competent) flute, arranged by the young cellist in the family.

PS (9.2.2015) We've performed that at the Oxford Music Festival (family class) now, so the version now on noteflight is the final one as we will move on to fresh challenges.

Dvořák abbreviated

The latest addition to my growing collection of arrangements for cello and flute is an adaptation of the slow movement from Dvořák's cello concerto. I've left out a section in the middle, bringing it down to 6 minutes length. The rest in bar 66 marks the spot.

As the original work is largely a dialogue between the solo cello and the woodwind instruments in the orchestra, I'm hoping that my edit makes some kind of musical sense, but all hints and suggestions for improvements are welcome.

PS: Noteflight members can see a handy list of our other scores here. Mere mortals can access them individually through the earlier blog entries.

Beethoven rondo

Moving on from first movement of the Beethoven Duo no. 1, we're now trying to play the third movement of the same piece, which is actually a little bit easier.

Here's the score:

As of 2021, the Flash view of the score disappeared, but this link is working.

This is mainly adapted from the Kalmus edition for violin and viola. A slightly different version is included in the duets for violin and cello from Editio Musica Budapest.

PS: Note that I added the first bar just to count me in and allow me time to get my hand back to the flute after pressing start.

Bach for cello and flute

Looking through the flute tag on tumblr earlier this week I came across an ancient video of Jethro Tull performing "Bouree" (not sure what happened to the second "r" but that's what they call the piece), based on Bach's Bourree from BWV996, which I played on the guitar many years ago.

As Jethro Tull play the Bach bit with flute and electric bass, I thought that should work for flute and cello as well, so I found a guitar version on noteflight and converted it to cello and flute, with both instruments taking turns in the repeats.

Sounds ok when noteflight plays it (though it doesn't do the pizz I wanted). Will try out with real instruments soon.

Beethoven for cello and flute

We're currently trying to play the first movement of Beethoven's duet No. 1 (originally written for clarinet and bassoon, but we're adapting an adaptation for violin and viola). Here's the score I've prepared - all the notes are there now (I hope), but dynamics aren't quite complete yet (requires Flash -but I can email PDF file on request):

As of 2021, the Flash thing no longer works at least on my computer, but this link should take you to the score, and you can look at it without being registered with noteflight.

If you click play above, you'll get a computer-sound version - but here is how it should sound like when it's played by proper musicians.

PS: an amazing and growing list of repertoire for cello and flute is here.

PPS: We played this at the Oxford Music Festival in January 2013. The adjudicator used words like "brave" and "challenging" a lot, but we made it to the end, so I count that as a success. We're now moving on to the third movement of the same piece, which appears to be a little bit easier (hoping I can get my head round the triplets). After writing up around 40 bars, I realised that a version of Movt. 2 and 3 playable with our instruments is actually published in the book:

Duets for Violin and Violoncello for Beginners, Vol 2
(Arpad Pejtsik & Lajos Vigh, eds.)
Editio Musica Budapest Z. 14062

so we'll work with that at the moment, maybe finish the draft on noteflight later.

Haydn for cello and flute

Here's a score we prepared earlier (and played last year). It's from a string duet by Haydn, and we adapted it for the flute. It's quite easy to stick together as the rhythm is mostly identical in both parts, and the parts individually are grade 3-4 level I would guess.



Next up is an adaptation of Johann Nepomuk Hummel's trio for piano, cello and flute in A major, op.78, which is essentially a set of variations on a Russian folk song called "Beautiful Minka." As the piano is quite dominant in this work and we don't have a pianist in the house, this one involves quite a bit of rearranging. We did just the theme last year, and I have now added one of the variations. Work in progress here:

Russian theme & variations

Dvorak for cello and flute

the young cellist in my family has arranged Dvorak's famous humoreske (originally a piano piece, but also found in the Suzuki string methods) for cello and flute, so I can play it with her (the limiting factor being, as she likes to put it, that I should first learn to count to four). The score is in noteflight and registered users can view it there, but for everybody else I am now trying to embed it here:



Wow, it actually works (requires Flash, though). If you press the button on the left above the score you can hear an approximation to the music (the cello sound doesn't sound much like a cello, and it's too metronomical for a romantic piece!) Check here for the kind of style we're aiming at :D

Seeing there seems to be very little repertoire available for cello and flute, I may put our other pieces online as well, by and by. They'll be around grade 5 level and are aiming to have a good balance between the two instruments.