Are there Double Bass pieces that cellists play?

There are all kinds of pieces, that were written for violone (whatever that really means), played on the cello. But these are from a time, where instrumentation was rather flexible anyway. Most of them are not solo pieces.
I can't think of solo pieces, written specifically for double bass, that had been transcribed by cellists.

 

Not sure but I doubt it. Why would they? They have so much more and better repertoire that it is unlikely they will look into bass repertoire. But there might be some exceptions.

 

When "L'Elephant" from "Carnival of the Animals" was first published it was arranged for cello or double bass with piano, even though Saint-Saëns originally wrote it for double bass. Also the bass solos from Haydn's early symphonies were assigned to the cello at one time, apparently over confusion as to what he meant by "violone" or how it was abbreviated in the score. That's all I can think of.

- Steve

 

I’ve not (yet) seen pieces written specifically for double bass in lists of cello performance studies or repertoire. Btw, here is a link to a useful database of difficulty-graded cello repertoire: Cello Repertoire Search

 

I've come across a few pieces that were originally written for bass OR cello.