Rossini – The Thieving Magpie Overture (String Quartet Score) – Score Digital Download

Rossini retired from a highly successful and lucrative career as an opera composer before he was 40 years old, and although he lived almost another 40 years he wrote very little more music except for some short piano pieces of a dance-like nature that he called Sins of Old Age. Some of these piano pieces were collected several decades after the composers death and were turned into a ballet by Ottorino Respighi - this is one of those pieces, now arranged by Carlo Martelli for string quartet.

It was once said by a famous man of letters that "Rossini's genius is that of sheer animal spirits" - this aspect of his work is present in abundance in this sparkling overture deftly arranged here for string quartet by Carlo Martelli.

Rossini retired from a highly successful and lucrative career as an opera composer before he was 40 years of age, and although he lived almost another 40 years he wrote very little more music except for some short piano pieces of a dance-like nature that he called Sins of Old Age. In 1919 Respighi gathered many of these pieces together and orchestrated them for the ever-popular ballet La Boutique Fantasque. This string quartet is the first of two medleys arranged by Carlo Martelli that includes music from the ballet.