It was a chance visit to a second hand bookshop in Nottingham that set me on the trail of Rossini's now well-known Duetto for cello and double bass. But the story begins earlier than that. In the 1960s I was studying the double bass at the Royal College of Music with Adrian Beers who was at that time principal of the English Chamber Orchestra on the front desk of the Philharmonia Orchestra and a member of the Melos Ensemble of London (then one of the leading ensembles of the world). I was working on the 'Dragonetti Concerto' as most young players do and I wanted to find out a bit about it. My teacher said he thought the autograph manuscript might be in the British Library which was all the encouragement I needed to secure a pass to the Reading Room so I could go and see for myself. There sure enough I found a large collection of Dragonetti's autograph manuscripts together with other bound volumes relating to his life. The papers had been lovingly collated and annotated by Vincent Novello one of Dragonetti's closest friends then deposited in the library before his departure to Italy in 1848 two years after Dragonetti's death. One of the volumes included a lot of letters about various engagements and music festivals copies of orders for strings Dragonetti wanted from Italy details about paintings he wanted to buy and numerous invitations to private functions. The manuscript of the 'Dragonetti Concerto' of course wasn't among the papers we now know it to have been written by Edouard Nanny a century or so later. One name that came up regularly in the documents was that of Sir George Smart. Smart had been a violinist in Salomon's orchestra and had played for Haydn at his London concerts in the 1790s. As a child he had learnt much about music from his father who had in turn been present at many of Handel's rehearsals when he was preparing some of his major works for the first time. Smart was also a fine keyboard player becoming organist of the Chapel Royal in 1822. As a conductor

INSTRUMENTATION : CELLO AND BASSO CONTINUO DATE OF PUBLICATIONS : 05/04/2000 NUMBER OF PAGES : 20 ARRANGER : DARMSTADT, GERHART SERIES : CELLO LIBRARY

Separate bass part for performance e.g. with cello accompaniment.Schott Violin Library includes eleven contrasting Baroque sonatas for violin and continuo bass. Besides popular and well-known sonatas by Corelli, Vivaldi, Handel and Telemann there are also delightful less familiar compositions by Dall'Abaco, Pepusch and Finger, among others. All these pieces are at lower to intermediate level. Some of them can be played in first position throughout, while others require just a few position changes, but the sonatas by Dall'Abaco, Kirchhoff, Vivaldi and Handel require fluent use of the first three positions. The pieces brought together in this book are the best-loved works from the popular series Schott Violin Library (VLB) and other violin repertoire published by Schott. / Violon Et Basse Continue

Critical edition by Michael Talbot. The vast majority of violin sonatas from Vivaldi's time, including those of Vivaldi himself, have come down to us in the form of a score employing two staves: one for violin, and one for bass. This guarantees that, although portions of the work may be missing, what survives is textually complete. Exceptionally, five of Vivaldi's violin sonatas are preserved solely in a partbook for violin held by the Diözesanarchiv, Graz, the complementary part for cello having disappeared. The sonatas appear to date from the period between the Dresden group (1716-1717) and the Manchester set (c. 1726). Three of the sonatas, which all have four movements, possess partial concordances in other sources, with which they share two or three movements, but two of them - RV 11 and RV 37 - have so far been found only in Graz (with the exception of an incipit for RV 11 found in a contemporary thematic catalogue). This critical edition makes these two works available for study and performance. The bass part is an editorial reconstruction, and there is in addition a realization of the continuo by the editor. / Violon Et Basse Continue

The series Eighteenth Century Italian Music includes compositions of special historical and musical significance. Each edition is based on the original sources to off er performers works that satisfy clear critical and musicological criteria. This anthology includes ten sonatas carefully selected from among those written by ten of the most important eighteenthcentury Italian composers of cello music: Luigi Boccherini, Sonata VI G. 4 - Antonio Caldara, Sonata ottava - Francesco Geminiani, Sonata op. V n. 2 H. 104 - Carlo Graziani, Sonata op. II n. 3 - Salvatore Lanzetti, Sonata op. I n. 5 - Benedetto Marcello, Sonata op. I n. 1 - Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Sinfonia a violoncello solo - Giovanni Benedetto Platti, Sonata quarta - Nicola Porpora, Sinfonia a violoncello solo - Antonio Vivaldi, Sinfonia a violoncello solo RV 39 / Violoncelle Et Basse Continue