Siciliana
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1929
- Duration
- 7'
- Publisher
- Ediciones Joaquín Rodrigo
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About this piece
Rodrigo wrote the Siciliana for cello and piano in 1929, while he was studying composition with Paul Dukas in Paris. The cellist Diran Alexanian premiered it with the composer at the piano on 9 March 1930, at an audition of works by Dukas's composition class at the École Normale de Musique. The first edition (Max Eschig, Paris, 1930) bears a dedication to the cellist Josep Ricart i Matas. It is a single lyrical movement in the gently rocking siciliano rhythm. The score is now published by Ediciones Joaquín Rodrigo, which gives the duration as five minutes, although recordings by Simca Heled and others run nearer seven.
Technical overview
A single slow movement of about five to eight minutes in siciliano rhythm. It calls for a sustained cantabile line and expressive phrasing in an early-20th-century French-influenced idiom.