Yuriy Leonovich

Tomorrow will mark 25 years since I started playing cello. It has been a tough but very rewarding road. Thinking about the subject I wanted to share with my readers on this occasion, I settled on my continued learning and…

This October marks the 185th anniversary of the birth of Camille Saint-Saëns. This is not as big as next year's 100th anniversary of his death. As musicians all over the world celebrate his 185th birthday, many will post performances of…

Next month, my orchestra is playing Haydn's G-major Violin Concerto. As with every piece I play or conduct, I also research it. Many good articles have come out in the last decade talking about Haydn's concertos. It is not my…

Here is part 3 to my Suzuki Cello School list. This compilation is called Intermediate Bach for the Cello by Charles Krane. Up until now, these pieces have not been identified by the publisher. Please read part 1 and part…

This list serves as Part 2 to my Suzuki Cello School list. As someone who loves to research, I don't understand why editors do not state their sources. As you will see below, on the left are the names that…

What is more popular than the Suzuki Method? This rhetorical question is meant to make you think about the influence of the Suzuki Method on generations of musicians for the last half century. The issue of composer and title attribution…

Review: Prokofiev Cello Sonata Op. 119 (Hans Sikorski / Boosey & Hawkes 2001 revised edition) 

Prokofiev's Cello Sonata, Op. 119 is a masterpiece cellists are lucky to have in our repertoire. It comes from Prokofiev's collaboration with cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.…

Shostakovich's Cello Sonata, Op. 40 turned 86 years old this year. This work is a staple of most professionals and advanced students' repertoires. This position is well-deserved. The cello sonata very much reflects the style of Shostakovich's Symphonies Nos. 4…

On July 20, I will be releasing my first studio album called Classical Sonatas for Two Cellos, Volume 1. The album includes 7 sonatas by Jean-Baptiste Bréval and 1 sonata by Bernhard Romberg. I'm dedicating this album to my…

New Publication Newsletter: May 2020

We have 6 new editions out this month. As many of us are making more music at home, we hope to bring brightness and a gift of music to your lives.

Arensky - Romanza, from…

Gaspar Cassadó has been my favorite cellist-composer for half of my life now. His music provides variety and imagination. His arrangements are especially well-crafted. As someone who arranges music almost daily, I look up to Cassadó for inspiration. Although the…

For this Installment of "Critical Notes Series," I would like to introduce my newest, long-awaited orchestration of Klengel's Concertino No. 1 for cello and orchestra. Klengel never orchestrated this work, leaving it for cello and piano, as with the other…

What an amazing work! Hearing just the first and last bars of the piece should inspire the listener to want to hear the entire concerto. The only thing standing in the way of its popularity is the lack of a…

I am starting a new series to give insight about common mistakes found in editions, as well as to point out common performance practice of works for cello. Because there is so much information written on the subject concerning works…

For over a decade, I've been listening to my own practicing and recording sessions. I've covered the mics, recorders, and other gear in previous posts. In this post I would like to cover the output source, specifically the headphones.

My…

When talking about Hungarian cello music, Zoltán Kodály and György Ligeti come up immediately, and rightfully so. These two composers built monumental and lasting careers, even postmortem. Sándor (Alexander) Jemnitz (1890-1963) was a famous composer and critic of Kodály's generation…

At one point a major force in the Soviet musical world, cellist-composer Victoria Yagling (1946-2011) is completely forgotten by the general public of the Russian-speaking vestige of the USSR. Yagling came from a family of award-winning artists and academics. Her…

We've done a mic shootout, but what about the preamp? Does the preamp matter? A preamp is a device that brings up the level of the mic signal to a level that will that is appropriate for recording. For this…

Jerzy Fitelberg (1903-1951) was a Polish-Jewish composer who was naturalized as an American citizen in 1937. His father was the famous conductor Grzerorz Fitelberg. Jerzy wrote his Unaccompanied Cello Sonata in 1945. The Sonata was premiered by Stefan Auber on…

Last week I got to test the hall where I will be playing my Bach marathon in just 32 days. I am trying to see which configuration to use for the recital. I used 3 mics for the test: a…

As a followup to my post about strings, I would like to do a quick mic shootout between my old Zoom H4 handy recorder in MP3 format and a pair of DPA omni-directional mics. Both recordings were made at the…

What is the favorite website of a classical musician? Of course, it's IMSLP (aka International Music Score Library Project, aka Petrucci Music Library)! This is an INVALUABLE resource for all performers and students, especially the students with no money. If…

It's very rare that I repeat the same solo repertoire from year to year. This choice was made to balance out the orchestra and audition rep that I played year in and year out. I've played Scheherazade, Billy the Kid…

Over the years I've tried different sets of strings. Thanks to the graciousness of Thomastik, Pirastro, Jargar, and Larsen (in no particular order) I've been able to experience the latest technology of string making first hand. The strings that really…