Rorrim no. 1 (A Short Essay) for cello and piano by Ovidiu Marinescu

By

Ovidiu Marinescu

PDF of score and cello part

After hearing pianist Anna Kislitsyna play Bach Prelude BWV 855 as arranged by Alexander Siloti I was drawn to the piece, both in its original form and the arrangement.  While Bach wrote the quasi-perpetual sixteenth note motion in the left hand Siloti brought it to the right hand.  I went a step further, somewhat freely inverting the text, on top of which I composed a cello cantilena of a distant, melancholic, perhaps angular character, with a burst of passion in the middle and a short cadenza.  One of my goals was to avoid another a Prelude of some kind or an “Ave Maria” (as Gounod wrote on top of Bach’s Prelude in C Major). The working title of this piece was Mirror, which eventually became “Rorrim” (Mirror spelled backwards).  “A Short Essay” hints at Samuel Barber’s Essays for Orchestra.

I had the opportunity to premiere the piece with pianist Carl Cranmer in Philips Autograph Library on April 25, 2019 for the Tom Smith Cello Scholarship Benefit Concert. The piece was recorded on June 1, 2019 in Boston with Anna Kislitsyna at Futura Studios for Parma Recordings, with John Weston as engineer, and Brad Michel producer.

Ovidiu Marinescu, May 28, 2019