Romantic Music for Cello and Orchestra

Virtuoso cello music developed in the earlier years of the nineteenth century, coinciding with a change in musical fashions. The expressive range of the instrument, coupled with an extension of technique parallel to the contemporary development of violin technique, led to an exploration of the possibilities of the instrument in music of varying quality, some of which now survives principally in the practice studio. At the same time the needs of the travelling virtuoso were increasingly met by transcriptions. The present collection represents repertoire by leading Russian and Lithuanian composers of the later nineteenth century and the twentieth.

Rimsky-Korsakov's dramatic Flight of the Bumble-Bee has taxed the dexterity of many an instrumentalist in arrangement after arrangement. The bee in question, a young prince in disguise and set on revenge against his wicked aunts, makes his flight in the opera Th