Little Latin Suite
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1990
- Duration
- 7'
- Publisher
- Palliser Music Publishing (score and parts); also Canadian Music Centre (unpublished, printed by CMC), RSN 10558, call no. MI 3213 R539li
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About this piece
Sylvia Rickard wrote Little Latin Suite in 1990 for cellist Joyce Skaggs and pianist Robert Holliston, who premiered it at Camosun College in Victoria in March 1991. Each of its three movements is modelled on a Latin American dance: a bossa nova, a beguine and the 'Varsix Tango', which Rickard had first written as a separate piece in 1986. In her note to the score she traces her love of Latin music to hearing Astor Piazzolla in Paris in 1960 and Antonio Carlos Jobim in Palo Alto in 1962.
Technical overview
Three short dances, mostly in 4/4, in a chromatic, jazz-tinged harmonic language full of accidentals. The bossa nova opens with sustained double stops and the beguine places high double stops and glissandi above the bass staff, so both need secure thumb position; the tango adds pizzicato, triplets and chromatic spiccato runs in treble clef. The cello often plays syncopated, offbeat lines against the piano's dance rhythm.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Collaboration with Piano
- Double Stops
- Dynamics
- Glissando
- Pizzicato
- Spiccato
- Syncopation
- Thumb Position
- Treble Clef
- Triplets