Capriccio italien

Announcing that he had completed his Capriccio italien at last, Tchaikovsky confessed that he wasn’t sure about “the strictly musical value” of the work but declared himself certain that “it will sound good.” In fact, when he heard a rehearsal for the first performance under the direction of Nikolay Rubinstein in Moscow in December 1880, he told his brother Modest that “it sounds wonderful.” It was an immediate success, achieving a second performance in Moscow and two more in St Petersburg within a few weeks.

Tchaikovsky had started work on what he then called the Italian Fantasy in Rome a year earlier, enjoying a fine view of the city from the Hotel Costanzi where he was staying with Modest and taking full advantage of the best winter weather known there for a long time. It was his intention to do for Rome what Glinka had done for the capital of Spain in his Second Spanish Fantasy, Recollection of a Summer Night in Madrid, and he collected a number of authentic Italian melodies - some of them from musicians in the streets, some of them from printed sources - to make a similar mosaic of local material.

For the opening fanfare he had to go no further than his own hotel, which was situated alongside the barracks of the Royal Italian Cuirasseurs. The identity of the theme introduced on the first entry of the strings, against shuddering harmonies on the brass, is not known: it has been described as a siciliano but, while the rhythm is more or less right, its treatment here is so dramatic that its country-dance associations are scarcely apparent. Either of the next two main themes - a cheerful song delivered in a quicker tempo by two oboes and a still brisker tune emerging out of lively dance rhythms on the violins - could be the “delightful folk-song” which the composer heard in the street in Rome and which, he said, he would ”definitely make use of.” The more likely candidate is the first of them, not only because it so attractively orchestrated but also because it is the one theme which can halt the apparently unstoppable progress of the racy tarantella (identified as Ciccuzza ) which begins after the re-entry of the Cuirasseurs and which ends the carnival in a brilliant coda.

Rupert Avis (copyright)