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Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky's Suite Italienne for cello and piano is an arrangement of several movements from his "Pergolesi" ballet Pulcinella (1919 - 1920). In Pulcinella, Stravinsky had taken works by the early eighteenth-century Italian composer Giambattista Pergolesi and effectively rewritten them by cutting, altering, and transforming the music into his own style. The result was a work which was, in Stravinsky's words, "the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible." Pulcinella was, in other words, Stravinsky's first work in which style in and of itself was the primary compositional determinate.

His Suite Italienne was not Stravinsky's first attempt to transform some of the numbers from the ballet into a work for solo string instrument and piano. In 1925, he wrote a Suite for violin and piano, after themes, fragments and pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi. In 1932, Stravinsky enlisted the aid of cellist Gregor Piatigorsky to re-work the earlier Suite into the Suite Italienne for cello and piano. In this version, the order of movements is "Introductione," "Serenata," "Aria," "Tarantella," "Scherzino," and "Minuetto e Finale." In 1933, Stravinsky and violinist Samuel Dushkin re-worked the Suite one last time for violin and piano.

The charm of Pergolesi's melodies and the piquant flavor of Stravinsky's re-writing makes his Suite Italienne one of his most enjoyable works. It is his only work cello and piano.