At some point, I realized that I have a whole category of arrangements that are not just “put the melody in the cello and call it a day.”

I do plenty of that too, and sometimes that is exactly what the music needs. A good melody, a sensible cello line, a piano part that still works, done. There is nothing wrong with that.

But some arrangements turn into something else.

That is where my inner Cassadó shows up.

Cassadó had a way of taking music that already existed and making it sound like it had passed through his own hands before reaching the cello. Not destroyed. Not disguised. Just reimagined. The original is still there, but the cello has claimed it.

That is the part of arranging I enjoy most.

A lot of my cello-and-piano arrangements begin simply enough. With piano pieces, I often put the melody in the cello, adjusted what needed adjusting, and filled out the piano a little. Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, Bortkiewicz, Lysenko, and others often already have melodic writing that wants to breathe. The danger there is doing too much.

But there are exceptions. Gomes’s Grande Valsa de Bravura needed more fire in the cello part. Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 needed to feel like a cello piece, not like a pianist’s hands awkwardly translated onto strings.

The orchestral pieces are a different challenge. A piano reduction is already a compromise, so I usually start there and then bring in details from the score. That works well for some pieces. But the most interesting ones are the exceptions.

The Enescu Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 became more of a paraphrase. Mozart’s Andante from Piano Concerto No. 23 turned into more of an equal sonata texture. In the Rachmaninov Adagio sostenuto from Piano Concerto No. 2, the cello mostly takes the orchestral part while the piano stays the piano. So it almost becomes a sonata pulled out of a concerto. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is basically an improvisation. The Weber Concertino becomes more of a real duo in some of the tuttis.

Those are the ones where I feel like I am doing more than arranging. I am rebuilding the piece so the cello has a reason to be there.

The vocal pieces are usually more direct. The cello sings the vocal line, and the piano keeps the accompaniment, sometimes with a few additions in the interludes. That is often enough.

But Bach’s “Es ist vollbracht” from the St. John Passion, BWV 245, is the opposite. The cello plays the viola da gamba part throughout, while the piano has to carry the voice, orchestra, and continuo. Rusalka becomes a fantasy. Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Nightingale Captivated by the Rose” lets the cello pick up some of the piano interlude material. Rossini’s “L’invito” becomes a virtuoso arrangement through Liszt.

That kind of thing interests me because it is not just transcription anymore. It is a conversation with the source.

The solo arrangements are maybe where this becomes clearest. There is no pianist helping you. If the original was for keyboard, orchestra, guitar, or something else, the cello has to make its own illusion.

That is what happens in Bach’s Prelude and Fugue No. 21 from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, BWV 866, Bach’s Prelude in C minor, BWV 999, and Handel’s Suite in G major, HWV 441. The cello has to suggest harmony, line, rhythm, and structure without pretending to be a keyboard.

Saint-Saëns’s Bourrée, Op. 135, No. 4, and Tárrega’s Capricho árabe are different again. They need to feel like idiomatic cello music while still keeping the character of the original world.

Then there are the solo pieces that are really closer to fantasies. My Cadenza-Fantasia after Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol and Air Russe on “Troika” are not simple little transcriptions. They are me taking material and seeing how far the cello can run with it.

The folk and popular pieces are similar. The Christmas carols, “Oy, Chanukah,” and Daichovo are not really arrangements in the plainest sense. They are familiar materials turned into cello pieces by improvisation and instinct.

That, to me, is the fun part.

Not every piece in this group is equally creative. Some are straightforward. Some are useful. Some are mostly translations. But the best of them are closer to fantasies, paraphrases, or recompositions.

That is the side of the work that feels closest to Cassadó for me.

Not because I am trying to imitate him exactly, but because I recognize the impulse. Take music that already exists. Let the cello get inside it. Then see if it comes out sounding inevitable.

A plain transcription says, “This can be played on the cello.”

The better ones say, “Maybe this was cello music all along.”