For the last several years, I've been coaching young chamber ensembles on a weekly basis (and in summer camps for much longer) and sometimes it's tricky to find just the piece for a given group of players. Last year, I arranged the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 for a young piano trio. Yes, the piano trio repertoire is vast, but often the piano part is much harder than the others, and often in earlier rep, the cello part is less interesting than the others. My goal was to fix that balance with music of the highest quality. I'm very happy with that arrangement, but I haven't had a chance to make a good recording of it. Make I can rectify that when some string players are home for Thanksgiving Break.
In another case, I had a very young quartet (ages 6-8) with the odd combination of one violin, two cellos, and one piano. The young pianist found it challenging to learn lots of new notes, so when the rest of the group was ready for something new, I just took a simple little Oscar Bolck etude she already knew and wrote parts for violin and two cellos to go along. Later in the year, I arranged the first song from Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin for the same group. Both pieces turned out pretty well and suited our purposes perfectly.
This year, one of my four assigned groups is a cello trio - just three cellos, no piano. (Although I don't play that often anymore, I played cello quite a bit through college.) First of all, I found a lovely little trio by Dotzauer (best-known as a compose of cello etudes) which isn't too difficult, and so we've been working on that. You may hear it played beautifully here. (It's the first 2:20 of the video, which also includes more Dotzauer trios.) Because only parts were available on IMSLP, I also made my own score and a virtual playlist for students to practice along with. Of course the synthesized cellos don't sound great, but they get the job done. Being able to generate this kind of material still seems like magic to me.
For that same trio, one of the cellists is learning the Gavotte attributed to Lully in the Suzuki repertoire. If you know the Suzuki repertoire, you know there are many gavottes - and if you have good taste, you know that Lully's is the best of them! Except that Lully didn't write it. I just learned TODAY that this music was actually written by his pupil, Marin Marais. You may hear something like what Marin Marais wrote here.
Although I didn't know who the real composer was on Saturday morning, I had decided the night before that it would be fun to arrange this gavotte for the three cellos. I concocted the following (including the score video) in about 75 minutes before I started teaching. The 2nd Cello part is pretty much exactly what's in the Suzuki Cello Book 3. The 3rd Cello part is mostly just the left hand of the piano accompaniment found there. The 1st Cello part is more my own invention - a descant-style decoration which mostly sits above the melody.
The result is quite charming (I think!) and I'm looking forward to working on it and playing it myself. Naturally, it has a pretty dark sound, but there's still nothing like a cello if you have to build an ensemble using only one instrument.
Speaking of cello trios, if you don't know the Popper Elegy (which adds piano to the mix), then give this a listen. Written for more advanced players, it utilizes a much wider range than I could. And it is perfection.
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