Prepare to play the Saint-Saens Cello Concerto in A minor!

2/20/2019

Preparing for Saint-Saens

The Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor is a work for cello and orchestra (or piano), written at an advanced level. Studying this Concerto often takes a year or more; it's a major work!

While there are no clearly marked or numbered movements, the Concerto does have three fairly distinct sections that might correlate with our idea of typical concerto movements.

Some techniques used in the first two movements are octave shifts, fast shifting (sometimes called "runs") into the high positions, double stop fifths and sixths, spiccato, and thumb position.

Free Saint-Saens Preparatory Exercises

These free preparatory exercises can help you get ready to start studying the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto. They work on some of the basic techniques needed to play the first few pages of the Concerto: bowing, octave shifts, chromatic scales, and more.

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Bowing I

Saint-Saens Cello Concerto Preparatory Study

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Bowing II

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Scale Shifting Exercise

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Rhythm & Staccato

Note: These free exercises are not a substitute for a full study of the Concerto like the one in The Saint-Saens Cello Concerto No. 1 Study Book. Instead, they help prepare you for the study book and show exercises can make learning more efficient.

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Rhythm I

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Rhythm II

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Octave Shifts I

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Octave Shifts II

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Chromatic Scale

Free Preparatory Cello Exercise: Shifting and Bowing Study

Books to study in preparation

The Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto is much easier to learn if you have acquired a solid grasp intermediate and advanced cello technique. You should be able to read bass, tenor, and treble clef and play in thumb position. You should have learned three-octave scales and it would be helpful if you have also studied octave shifts, double stop sixths, and double stop octaves.

Three-Octave Scales for the Cello, Book One: The Basics

Like these exercises? Now, you can learn the rest of the Saint-Saens Cello Concerto using a Study Book!

We are very excited to present this new release:
The Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 Study Book for Cello, Volume One!

Live outside the US? All of our books are on Amazon around the world and many of our books are available as PDF downloads on Learnstrings:

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Authors

Cassia Harvey can't ever find or play enough exercises. She searches for rare and out-of-print studies and etudes in her free time. If you know of any, please let her know. Seriously; it's an obsession.

Myanna Harvey's teacher assigned her piles of exercises when she was growing up but whenever her mother stopped listening, Myanna would quickly break away from the Sevcik to play a bit of Brahms or Beethoven she had heard on the radio. Now she practices with exercises and assigns them to students but her greatest passion is playing chamber music.

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