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About this piece
A short character piece for muted cello and piano, published by G. Schirmer in New York in 1917. Vera Poppé was a Cape Town-born cellist of Russian descent who studied at the Royal Academy of Music and performed as a soloist in London, Chicago and New York. Its light, pipe-like tune with grace notes, trills and harmonics makes it a useful encore for students who are new to thumb position and harmonics.
Technical overview
One movement in D major, 4/4, 'Leggiero e con vivacità' (crotchet = 120), played con sordino. The melody sits in tenor clef with grace-note figures and dotted rhythms, then moves into treble clef for a trilled passage and a slurred chromatic run up to a high fermata. Natural harmonics, including harmonic double stops, recur through the piece, and it ends with a pizzicato chord.
Technical focus
- Harmonics
- Thumb Position
- Double Stops
- Shifting
- Dotted Rhythms
- Dynamics