Naughty Bits: Beethoven Quartets for cello

Instruments: cello

Catalogue no.: U1990-2

ISMN: 979-0-708807-14-8

Naughty bits – those tricky passages in chamber music that appear out of nowhere, and which can trip you up when it was all going so well. The “naughty bit” might be a passage in thumb position, a tricky rhythm, some awkward and unexpected accidentals, tenor or treble clef passages, or a run of fast notes – but wouldn’t life be better if you had had a chance to practise those bits in advance? So here’s the solution: a volume of those awkward passages from Beethoven’s string quartets, for you to practise, so that you can approach any Beethoven quartet prepared for those “naughty bits”.

The publishers have used Peters Edition parts in order to have their editors’ fingering and bowing suggestions, which tend to be missing from urtext parts. A full explanation of how these excerpts have been selected, fingerings, bowings and tempi suggested etc is in the Foreward of this Naught Bits volume. Bar numbers relate to Peters Edition parts. SJ Music also publishes cello Naughty Bits from Haydn quartets (U1989-4) and from quintets, sextets and octets from the classical repertoire (U1992-8), for 2nd Violin from Beethoven quartets (U1991-2), and for violists from Beethoven and Mozart quartets (one volume: U1991-3).