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If I have questions over the cello part I am playing (for a cello and piano piece) I often refer to the piano score. It always amazes me how different the cello part and the cello part in the piano score can be – apart from the obvious mistakes. The differences are not normally different notes or note lengths, but different bowings, articulations, dynamics etc.

For example look at the IMSLP upload of the Arensky Chanson Triste Op.46. The piano score part is bowed differently. As far as I can tell the cello part and piano score were engraved at the same time.

Has anyone any ideas why this might be and so what (if anything) might be learnt from studying the instrument part in the piano score?

Nowadays with computer typesetting, the score is done first, and in the part extraction, the parts will theoretically come out exact. Although this doesn't always happen, and many typesetters don't proofread adequately, it is generally far more accurate in terms of slurs and articulations than when everything was hand engraved.

In the old days (which wasn't that long ago, by the way - I think hand engraving really only finally stopped in the 1980s), It could be that the engraver was working fast and left some things out, and it could also be that an editor (who would possibly be a cellist, for example) would edit the solo part but the engraver would not necessarily transfer his changes into the full score as well.

Finding differences are a good chance for us to use our brains and our training to make a scholarly decision as to which is more correct/feasible/better. Sometimes you will decide the score is better, and sometimes the solo part.

I believe the Arensky piece is part of Op. 56 rather than Op. 46...

I've looked at the Op56 and it seems clear to me that the piano/cello score (the full score) is likely just what the composer sent to the printer to be engraved. The cello part has been edited by a cellist (or someone very familiar with string playing) who inserted fingerings and specific bowings that try to realize the composer's indicated phrasing. (There are no bowing marks in the full score, BTW, only articulations and phrasings, which are not the same thing.) It is possible that Arensky himself edited the parts, since his writing for strings elsewhere is quite proficient (often difficult but not impossible). And if there are contrary indications, it's the full score that should be considered the intention and the part an attempt (possibly one among many) at a realization of that intention. In any case, pay close attention to the part's fingering and bowing since together they offer hints as to when you can apply portamenti, an essential but often neglected part of late-Romantic string performance practice.

--Sixtus