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cello duet sheet music

Cello Blogs

By cello duet sheet music, cello duets, sheet music sales No Comments

If you feel practising the cello can sometimes be a bit isolating, reading cello blogs is a good way to stay in touch with other cellists’ enthusiasms and obsessions.
cello blogs

As with all blogs beware of believing everything you read! Everyone’s approach to the cello is different. What suits one person may not work for another.That said, I think it can be beneficial to hear others’ views, as long as you remember you don’t have to agree with them.

Cello Websites

Here are some of the most interesting websites:

The Cello Internet Society – accessible through Facebook, easy to join and unpretentious. It’s full of ideas, suggestions, videos and enthusiasm, and if you have a problem you can post a question and get lots of replies fast.

Cello Bello – a fairly new website covering most aspects of cello playing including teaching videos, masterclasses and a legacy section about famous cellists from the past.

David Finkel’s 100 Cello Talks on You Tube ( see Talk 1 below) are fascinating. They present practical tips from a wonderful cellist with loads of performing experience.

On a lighter note Extreme Cello  is hugely impressive and full of energy and fun!

Finally,  if all this cello talk inspires you to want to learn some new duets why not visit our online shop on the link below:
Cello Duet Shop

More Narrative Playing

By fedora strings, sheet music sales, wedding ceremony music No Comments

Following on from the last blog here is some more narrative playing – that is, where there is a clear interpretation that is full of ideas.

Example 1: Casals and Bach

Casals’ heartfelt recording has spellbinding drama .

Example 2: Rachel Podger and Andrew Manse

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The imaginative dialogue between the two soloists in this performance of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto makes the music sparkle into life.

Cello Duet Narrative

The cello duet arrangements of Puccini’s aria Your Tiny Hand is Frozen and Mozart’s Non Piu Andrai have a clear story line so lots of opportunities to play with narrative. You can hear and buy this music on the links below:

Your Tiny Hand is Frozen

Non Piu Andrai

Four Famous Operatic Arias arranged for Cello Duet

 

Warming up on the cello

By CD Sales, fedora strings performance One Comment

Warming up on the cello used to be quite a boring process for me. I would usually try a few scales and shifts or perhaps technical exercises. While there is nothing wrong with any of that, I now begin warming up by inventing a tune or playing by ear and then improvising – including improvising in thumb position. I have found this to be 100% more beneficial. For me it reinforces  the pleasure of feeling at one with your instrument, of realising that you too can compose – and that interpretation is most effective if you make the music you are playing sound like it is your own.
warming up on the cello

General creativity

If you want to practise a particular type of bowing when warming up on the cello , why not invent your own series of chords to try it with? If you want to practise a particular shift – say a major 6th –  why not also invent a short piece based on that particular interval? In the past I’ve found that if you give a first performance there is a relaxing sense of freedom. None of the critics or audience know how it is meant to go,  so you have a completely free hand as long as you look confident! Why not apply that same confidence to unaccompanied Bach?

Escaping confines within the classical

Have you ever been struck but how much more relaxed folk and pop musicians usually look in performance? Some of this is because the music is easier and more repetitive. But is it also because a lot of the music has been composed or arranged by the performers themselves? How wonderful it would be to be able to carry that sense of pleasure in performing into the classical world.

Our own improvisation

Roger and I have found that improvising and composing music definitely helps our arrangements and keeps creativity alive. You can hear some examples of our arrangements on our Moonlight and Music cd which you can buy by clicking the link below:
https://www.fedorastrings.com/product-category/cd-sales/

Opera Arias arranged for Cello Duet

By intermediate and advanced cello duet sheet music, sheet music sales

The opera arias I have recently arranged for cello duet have been a pleasure to write: SJ Music
My starting point was to look at the number of instruments in a Puccini score – an awe inspiring experience. Did Puccini immediately hear the music like this in his head or add the orchestration later? According to a friend of mine – an expert orchestrator – it was probably the former.
opera arias arranged for cello duet                                            Puccini
Overall objective
My aim with the cello duets was to ensure the tune was always clear and then try to capture the overall mood in the accompanying part, often by using cellistic special effects. In my teens I spent ages listening to recordings of great singers – and I loved the beauty of their phrasing, their rubato and the drama of it all. It’s rare to hear string music as expressively phrased as singing often is, but isn’t it worth aspiring to?

Four Famous Cello Duets

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SJ Music has just published  Four Famous Opera Arias arranged for two cellos which I wrote last year and recorded in Edinburgh with Mark Bailey. You can buy these famous cello duets from music shops and online at SJ Music’s website: Four Famous Opera Arias for Cello Duet

You can also buy the music at Fedora Strings here: Cello Duets
four famous cello duets

Which opera arias are they?
The arias are  Toreador Song and Habanera from Carmen,  Your Tiny Hand is Frozen from La Boheme and Non Piu Andrai from The Marriage of Figaro . All are very different in mood and it is a delight to have a clear narrative to the music.

You can buy the cd too
The cd which accompanies the arrangements can be purchased from our website here: Cello Duet CD

About SJ Music
SJ Music is based in London and specialises in unusual string chamber music and cello repertoire. It sells cello duets and cello quartets and octets as well as fun melodies which focus on cello harmonics  and Christopher Bunting’s excellent technique books which I can thoroughly recommend. If you haven’t discovered this imaginative publishing company yet they are well worth exploring.

 

 

Free Sheet Music

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Free Sheet Music
Summer holidays are a fab time to browse through repertoire and we are now offering one free sheet music arrangement if you buy five.Click below to go direct to our violin and cello duet shop:

https://www.fedorastrings.com/product-category/sheet-music-sales/

Free Sheet MusicGreat Cello Duets to Explore
Duets are a wonderfully enjoyable form of chamber music and cellist Mark Bailey and I recently recorded a cello duet which had been written by our former teacher Christopher Bunting and is based on the Bourees from Bach’s 3rd cello suite and has some tricky string crossing,  lots of character and definite sense of humour. Listen below:

Other wonderul cello duets  include Handel’s Cello Duet in G minor  and Vivaldi’s Double Cello Concerto – also in G minor.

Expand your Cello Duet Repertoire Here
We are now selling ten cello duet arrangements of  well known music on our website  – and if you browse through our online shop you’ll see that if you buy five of our arrangements we will give you one arrangement free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Handel as a young man

Cello Duet Sheet Music

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I have just returned from Edinburgh where I have been recording our cello duet sheet music  with my friend Mark Bailey – the cellist in the Edinburgh String Quartet.The recording session took place at the Reid Hall which is part of Edinburgh University.
Cello Duet Sheet Music

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recording the Duets
We had nine duets to record in a short space of time, but we had a lot of fun and a good recording engineer in Derek   Williams . We’ve just been sent copies of the first three recordings and the rest will follow in the next few days. To buy the duets and hear our recordings click here:
https://www.fedorastrings.com/shop/
The Reid Hall

Famous Cello Duets

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Famous  Cello Duets
We have added ten cello duets of famous music to our online shop.
Why Cello Duets?
Cello duets are extremely enjoyable to play and can be great fun in lessons, giving the pupil an opportunity to play chamber music with an experienced professional. Many of our arrangements use col legno, pizzicato, double stopping, l.h.pizz or harmonics to enhance the character of the music.Both instruments share the tunes and are evenly matched.

Famous cello duets

The Repertoire
We are now selling ten sheet music cello duets: Charpentier’s Te Deum and Monteverdi’s Chiome d’Oro from the baroque era, the passionate and romantic Toreador Song and Habanera from ‘Carmen’, three folk songs – Lilliburlero, A Lark in the Clear Air and My Love is like a Red, Red Rose , Jerome Kern’s Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man, and Your Tiny Hand is Frozen from La Boheme and Non Piu Andrai from The Marriage of Figaro.

About the Music
All of these tunes work beautifully on the cello and are intermediate in standard. Your feedback is very welcome, so if you have ideas for new cello duo repertoire or would like to let us know what you think, just email at info@fedorastrings.com