Composer, cellist, and educator Yuriy Leonovich writes music rooted in Eastern European and Jewish traditions, shaped by classical form, and animated by personal memory, literary imagination, and historical reflection. His works range from rhapsodic solo pieces to chamber music of lyricism, virtuosity, and narrative depth. The selection below offers a glimpse into a creative voice formed at the intersection of performance, scholarship, and lived experience.
Air Russe (Variations on "Troika") for Cello Solo
Composed in the fall of 2008, this set of variations began as an improvisation on the Russian folk song “Troika,” which had lodged itself in my ear after many listenings to Zurab Sotkilava’s folk song album. I started sketching the work in a practice room not long after performing Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben with the Cleveland Institute orchestra, and traces of Strauss’s musical language can be heard throughout the piece. The final variation, in 5/8, brings the set to an exhilarating close.
Cadenza-Fantasia No. 1 for Cello Solo (after Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol)
Written in the summer of 2007 in Breckenridge, Colorado, this work was the first in a series of improvisatory pieces for solo cello based on well-known classical compositions. Inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, it was written for Eugena Chang, principal cellist of the National Repertory Orchestra, and I premiered it at the Silverthorne Performing Arts Center. It translates the brilliance and improvisatory energy of the original into an idiomatic, virtuosic work for solo cello.
2 Christmas Carols, a Fantasy for 2 Cellos (or Cello and Piano) - Listen
This joyful two-part fantasy brings together the Ukrainian carol “Sleep, Jesus, Sleep” and “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” It moves between the meditative stillness of the first carol and the lively polonaise rhythm of the second, balancing reflection with festive energy. Because both cellists share the melodic material, the work is especially effective in both recital and liturgical settings.
Cre(m)ation for Cello and Piano - Listen
Cre(m)ation is a five-movement suite for cello and piano inspired by the Kyiv Crematorium at Baikove Cemetery, an architectural landmark whose modernist and expressionist forms embody both drama and solemnity. For me, the building has long stood as a symbol of the cycle of life and death. Its title, Cre(m)ation, evokes the delicate divide between creation and cremation, concepts separated by a single letter and bound together by the same awareness of life’s ephemerality and the nearness of beginning and end. Read more
Fantasie-Impromptu, Op. 58 for Cello Solo - Listen
Composed in the summer of 2004 for my stand partner Kim Sutton in the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra, Fantasie-Impromptu unfolds in the atmosphere of a lucid dream. Its musical language moves through colorful harmonies and flexible tempos that ebb and flow with improvisatory freedom. The piece began as a one-take improvisation that I later set down in notation, which is why I gave it the title Impromptu.
Fantasia on Themes from Dvořák's Opera Rusalka for Cello and Piano
Composed in May and June 2008, Rusalka Fantasia has become one of my most frequently performed works and, after Doina, my most performed composition. It has also been recorded by Brian Thornton. An earlier fantasy on Dvořák’s opera, written in my teens, was ultimately discarded and completely rewritten after hearing the Cleveland Orchestra’s semi-staged performance of Rusalka. In shaping the present version, I sought to preserve the tight network of motives that binds together the opera’s characters and scenes. The best-known episode, Rusalka’s “Song to the Moon,” emerges from a piano introduction suggestive of the opera’s harp and water imagery, before the cello takes up her aria. The concluding Polonaise gradually gathers momentum, presenting a radiant transformation of Rusalka’s motive, while the opera’s four-note warning motive sounds in the piano bass before the virtuosic close.
Koheleth for Cello Solo (also for 4 Cellos and String Quartet/Orchestra) - Listen
Composed in November 2020, Koheleth was my first new composition after a ten-year hiatus. My last major work had centered on the life of King Solomon; this suite may be heard as its companion, turning from Solomon’s life to his wisdom. Koheleth, the Hebrew name for the book of Ecclesiastes, unfolds in five movements, each reflecting a different aspect of its teaching. Vanity appears as urgent, fleeting, and short-lived, while wind is suggested through sul ponticello and harmonics, both bowed and plucked. The monotony of everyday life emerges in a minimalist four-chord progression, interrupted by flashes of fear and turbulence. V’ahavta, a traditional Jewish chant calling God’s people to love him, also finds a place in the work, and the finale is an instrumental setting of Psalm 139.
Serenade for Cello Solo - Listen
Composed in 2008 at the Kent/Blossom Festival, Serenade is a journey through nocturnal sound. The outer movements frame the work with the gentle strumming of a troubadour’s guitar. The second movement briefly recalls Strauss’s Don Juan, while the third becomes a dance repeated with almost hypnotic insistence. A Sicilienne follows, and the cadenza closes the work in the spirit of Bartók’s night music, full of tension and unrest.
Solomon for Cello and Piano - Listen
Originally composed in 2010 for the Prima Trio of violin, clarinet, and piano, Solomon is a five-movement work in a Klezmer idiom tracing the life of King Solomon. Its opening motive is derived from the rhythm of the Russian liturgical reading, “You shall serve the Lord your God,” and that motive returns throughout the work in both rhythmic and melodic form. The second movement draws on Goldfarb’s well-known “Shalom Aleichem” and unfolds in three sections: a shofar-like call to worship, a jazzy episode with walking bass, and a freilach. The third movement is a hora, while the fourth takes the form of an improvisation based on material from A Wandering Klezmer for solo clarinet. The final movement reprises the opening, with a hint of the Dies irae near the close. The work was transcribed for cello and piano in 2014 and revised in 2021.
Sonata for Violin and Cello, Op. 56 (2003) - Listen
Composed in 2003, this two-movement sonata explores the lyrical and virtuosic possibilities of both the violin and cello. Its musical language draws on Eastern European folk music and Klezmer traditions, shaping a dialogue between the two instruments that is by turns energetic, expressive, and richly colored.
Sonatensatz, Op. 57 (2004) for Cello and Piano - Listen
Originally planned as a multi-movement work based on three motifs, death, life, and conflict, Sonatensatz ultimately became a single movement, as I felt nothing more needed to be said. A brief slow introduction presents all three motifs in fragmentary form, after which the work unfolds as an exploration of their melodic and harmonic potential. The piano opens the first fast section with a theme derived from the life motif, while the underlying harmonies draw chiefly on the death motif and the conflict chord. The piece ends with the return of the death motif. In 2006, it was orchestrated and recast as a three-movement cello concerto.
Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano - Listen
The Short Pieces from Old Notebooks were composed in July and August 2006 in Cleveland, shortly after I finished two large concertos, including the completion of Tchaikovsky’s Cello Concerto. This set became a way for me to pursue a more concise mode of expression rather than continue forcing musical ideas into large sonata forms with extended development. In many ways, that search for concision has shaped my work ever since.
The pieces in the set are all tied in one way or another to my last two years of high school and first two years of college. Friska began as a Theory IV assignment exploring a synthetic mode and a reimagined tonic-dominant relationship. Valse lent, from the same class, focuses on the whole-tone scale and planing. The Prelude and Fugue were drawn from my Sonata for Violin and Cello, Op. 56, composed when I was nineteen. The Valse reimagines the first movement of A Wandering Klezmer for solo clarinet, Op. 55, from the same year. The Passacaglia was first jotted down in a practice room on staff paper bearing the face of Garfield the Cat when I was eighteen. The Kolomyjka, a Ukrainian folk dance, grew out of a humorous song I made up about cats loving to eat fish. The Tarantella was originally the finale of Cello Concerto No. 28, and the Freilach the finale of Cello Concerto No. 27, both written when I was seventeen.
I had originally intended the Tarantella to close the set. But after learning of the death of my friend and mentor Cantor Stephen Dubov, I added the Freilach in his memory. He was the first person to introduce me to Klezmer music, and he played both clarinet and cello in his Kidz Klez Band of Michigan. The Freilach is based on the chant “Avinu malkeinu,” traditionally sung on Yom Kippur. In the original concerto, that chant served as the theme for variations in the slow movement, while the Freilach functioned as the finale, the last variation featuring interplay among the solo cello, English horn, and clarinet.
Le Tombeau de Dvořák for Cello and Piano
Antonín Dvořák has long been my favorite composer of songs. His mastery of the genre, especially his ability to unite the traditions of German Lieder with a distinctly Slavic voice, remains unmatched in my ears. Among his works, Love Songs, Op. 83, stands for me at the summit of late Romantic song. Composers such as Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Wolf also wrote remarkable song cycles, but Dvořák’s voice has always resonated with me most deeply.
Out of that admiration, and especially under the influence of Dvořák’s Biblical Songs, Op. 99, I felt drawn to write biblical art songs in a Slavic language. While many sacred settings of scripture exist in English, and while biblical texts have long inspired choral and liturgical music in Latin, Church Slavonic, and German, there is comparatively little in this genre in Ukrainian. I wanted to help fill that gap.
The completed cycle is scored for baritone or alto voice, with transpositions available for tenor or soprano and for bass. Each song lasts roughly two to three and a half minutes and is shaped by a concise but evocative style. Le Tombeau de Dvořák is a suite of six of these songs arranged for cello and piano. It is dedicated to the memory of four friends I have lost in recent years: Herman Whitfield III (2022), Oksana Vignan (2023), Jon Toben (2024), and Vinny DeMio (2025).