These are first-rate pieces of lighter music for cello recitals. The qualities that linger in the mind after hearing them are the sheer melodiousness and the skill and prettiness of their scoring for the solo instrument and the orchestra.

From the time Glazunov entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory at a young age, he astonished his professors (who included Rimsky-Korsakov) and the leading musicians of the day with his ear and his exceptional musical melody. (He "saved" the overture to Borodin's great opera Prince Igor because the chemist-composer, who had never had time to write it down, played it through once in Glazunov's presence and the young man was able to do so from memory.) If Glazunov did not fully live up to his promise as a mature composer, he composed much first-class music. Enough of these pieces were in smaller forms or made of small, individual movements that it can be argued his main problem was that his decision to write numerous large-scale symphonies was against his true nature. No such problem obtains with this pair of lovely cello works, which can be performed as a concert pair or individually. One of Glazunov's first successes as a composer was his String Quartet No. 1. Even though he was only 17 when he wrote it, it was taken up by an all-star group of players featuring the great teacher/violinist Leopold Auer on first violin and Alexander Vershbilovich as cellist. In gratitude, Glazunov wrote these pieces for Vershbilovich. The first, Mélodie No. 1, Op. 20, is an eight-minute work that is a lovely outpouring of calm, lyrical music. It has a touch of Russian melancholy and an accompaniment with some rippling effects that suggest that here, the Russian soul finds peace in a lakeside or woodland setting. The other piece, Sérénade espagnole No. 2, Op. 20, takes its place as one of the many excellent pieces written by Russians after a visit to Spain. (Glazunov had gone to Spain and Spanish Morocco with the music publisher Belyayev and it was Glazunov's first visit to a warm climate.) The two melodies in this Sérénade are, again, lyrical, but in a contrasting, fast tempo. They are not vigorous, remaining mostly calm. In addition to the cello, its woodwind opposite number in the bassoon gets a go at the second theme, introducing it for the cello to take up. Glazunov makes no attempt to create a "Spanish" sound in the orchestration; the Spanish-ness of this music is strictly in the melody and in the rhythm of some of the accompaniment. This makes the piece something of a relief from similar pieces that overdo the local color.

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Glazunov's Sérénade Espagnole (Spanish Serenade) is the second of two pieces Belyayev published in 1888 as Op. 20. The Melodie that precedes it is a long and rapturous song for cello and orchestra composed in 1887. The Sérénade Espagnole is a short and tuneful evocation of the Spain Glazunov and Belyayev visited in 1883. Scored for solo cello, winds, strings, and harp, the Sérénade Espagnole opens with a gracefully waltzing lyrical melody that slips from major to minor and back again set against a wash of wind colored arpeggios in the harp, music of delicate light and sweet delight. But the Sérénade Espagnole's contrasting central episode is too big a contrast, music with an almost parodistic Spanish-style tune played deep in the cello against a lumpen accompaniment. The return of the opening theme is too brief and the coda even briefer.

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