Rimsky-Korsakov - Flight of the Bumble-Bee for cello and piano

Rimsky-Korsakov - Flight of the Bumble-Bee for cello and piano. You can download the PDF sheet music Rimsky-Korsakov - Flight of the Bumble-Bee for cello and piano on this page. Flight of the Bumblebee is recognizable for its frantic pace when played up to tempo, with nearly uninterrupted runs of chromatic sixteenth notes. It is not so much the pitch or range of the notes that are played that challenges the musician, but simply the musician's ability to move to them quickly enough. Because of this and its complexity, it requires a great deal of skill to perform. To view the first page of Rimsky-Korsakov - Flight of the Bumble-Bee for cello and piano click the music sheet image.
PDF format sheet music
Cello part: 2 pages. 339 K	Piano part: 4 pages. 374 K
Download PDF (14.99 €)	Download PDF (14.99 €)
"Flight of the Bumblebee" is an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, composed in 1899–1900. The piece closes Act III, Tableau 1, during which the magic Swan-Bird changes Prince Gvidon Saltanovich (the Tsar's son) into an insect so that he can fly away to visit his father (who does not know that he is alive). Although in the opera the Swan-Bird sings during the first part of the "Flight", her vocal line is melodically uninvolved and easily omitted; this feature, combined with the fact that the number decisively closes the scene, made easy extraction as an orchestral concerto piece possible. Although the "Flight" does not have a title in the score of the opera, its common English title translates like the Russian one (Полёт шмеля = Polyot shmelya). Incidentally, this piece does not constitute one of the movements of the orchestral suite that Rimsky-Korsakov derived from the opera for concerts.