Leonovich - Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano
  • Leonovich - Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano
  • Leonovich - Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano
  • Leonovich - Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano
  • Leonovich - Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano
  • Leonovich - Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano
  • Leonovich - Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano
  • Leonovich - Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano

Leonovich - Short Pieces from Old Notebooks for Cello and Piano

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The Short Pieces were composed in July-August 2006 in Cleveland, right after I finished 2 large concertos, including the completion of Tchaikovsky's Cello Concerto. These pieces were a way for me to explore a concise form of expression instead of trying to fill the old sonata form with themes and development. Concise expression is the musical path

The Short Pieces were composed in July-August 2006 in Cleveland, right after I finished 2 large concertos, including the completion of Tchaikovsky's Cello Concerto. These pieces were a way for me to explore a concise form of expression instead of trying to fill the old sonata form with themes and development. Concise expression is the musical path I've been on since 2006.

The Short Pieces are all somehow tried into my last 2 years of high school and first 2 years of college. Friska was composed as a Theory 4 assignment, exploring a synthetic mode and redefined tonic-dominant relationship. Valse lent was also an assignment from the same class. Here, I focused on the whole-tone scale and planing. The Prelude and Fugue were extracted from the Sonata for Violin and Cello, Op. 56, which I composed at 19. The Valse is a reimagined first movement from my A Wandering Klezmer for clarinet solo, Op. 55, from the same year. The Passacaglia was jotted down in a practice room on staff paper with the face of Garfield the Cat when I was 18. The Kolomyjka is a Ukrainian folk dance, stemming from a humorous song I made up about cats loving to eat fish. The Tarantella was originally the finale from my 28th cello concerto and the Freilach was the finale of my 27th concerto, both works composed when I was 17.

I intended the Tarantella to be the last piece in the set but have received the news that my friend and mentor Cantor Stephen Dubov had died, so I added the Freilach in his memory. He was the first person to introduce me to Klezmer music. I played clarinet and cello in his Kidz Klez Band of Michigan. The Freilach is based on the chant "Avinu malkeinu," usually sung on Yom Kippur. In the original concerto, "Avinu malkeinu" was the theme for variations in the slow movement and the Freilach was the finale, the final variation with the interplay between the solo cello, English horn, and clarinet.

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