Flight of the Bumble Bee

This section is one of the best-known programme pieces in music literature, however its fame came also because of its being one of the most popular pieces among arrogant players. This is a piece, all of which, is a demonstration of the musician's virtuoso ability. The motion in especially rapid chromatic progressions (of playing a race between neighboring notes one after another) represents the bee humming while constantly flying between the flowers, abundant in nectar. Or was it nectar indeed?

Nowadays, few people remember that this is a section from the third part of an opera called "Tsar Saltan" by Rimsky-Korsakov. In this scene, Price Guidon (who became a bee due to a vicious spell) stings his aunts and the old witch who helped them with casting the spell.

Ever since the opera, nowadays forgotten, was written, and the fame of the "Flight of the Bumble Bee", many versions were arranged for many instruments, and virtuoso players of all these instruments made use of it in order to show their capability to play quickly and precisely.