Sarasate: Romanza Andaluza: For Cello

Here is a free sheet-music download of Sarasate‘s Romanza Andaluza, transcribed for cello from its original violin version.

What a delight to be able to play this magnificent, deeply passionate piece on the cello. And what a surprise to see how well it lies for our instrument: we can even play it in the same key as the violin without it going excessively high. And of course this means that we can use the original piano accompaniment with no need for a transposition. The piano part can be downloaded from www.imslp.org.

To avoid the piece becoming impossibly difficult, some of the double stops played by the violin in the second half of the piece have been removed. But many have remained. Virtuoso cellists might like to replace the “censored” double stops while lesser virtuosi might even like to remove more of them, which is what has been done in the Easier (and Easiest) Versions (see below). Ideally, the notes that are removed from from the cello part would be given to the piano but this will need to be done by hand..

In the “Easier Version”, apart from the removal of some (very few) of the double stops, the highest passages have been transposed down an octave. In the “Easiest Version” the cello part has been even more simplified and lowered – now it never goes higher than the Neck Region and almost all of the double-stops have been removed.

1. Edited Performance Version
2.   Clean Performance Version
3.    Easier Version
4.    Easiest Version

And here is an audio file of the piano accompaniment, played on the guitar. If you download it then you can play it at different speeds with various programs (Amazing Slowdowner etc):