Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)

Capriccio Espagnol, Op.34

Alborada
Variazioni
Alborada
Scena e canto gitano
Fandango asturiano

Rimsky-Korsakov was one of the better-travelled composers of his generation. Between 1862 and 1865, as an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, he visited Britain (where he wrote the slow movement of his First Symphony in a pub in East London), New York, Rio de Janeiro and Cadiz. So when, in 1887, he set about writing an orchestral work on Spanish melodies, he had some idea what he was dealing with – at least, unlike Claude Debussy, who wrote his Ibéria in 1908, he’d actually visited Spain! A fascination with the South was a common trait amongst Russian composers; Glinka had written an overture on the Jota Aragonesa and Tchaikovsky’s love of Italy inspired his Capriccio Italien and Souvenir de Florence. But for Rimsky-Korsakov, the master of orchestral colour, who wrote rapturously in his autobiography of the colours and warmth of the southern night, the idea of Spain must have held a special allure.

Capriccio Espagnol began as a projected "Fantasy on Spanish Themes" for violin and orchestra, but Rimsky rapidly concluded that he could do better justice to the melodies with a purely orchestral work – "the Spanish themes, of dance character, furnished me with rich material for employing colourful orchestral effects". The first violin does, however, have a prominent solo role in the finished Capriccio, as do the clarinet and harp. Capriccio Espagnol is a short suite, in five linked movements. The opening Alborada (morning song) sets an exuberant, festive mood, and returns at the middle and end of the Capriccio as a sort of motto-theme. The second movement, Variazioni, takes a tender, nocturne-like melody through a range of warm orchestral colours before the Alborada bustles in once more. The swaggering Scena e canto gitano (Scene and gipsy song) opens with a fanfare and evokes the vigour of Spanish gipsy music with some brilliant instrumental solos; the spirited Fandango asturiano follows directly on, and the Capriccio concludes with the festive return of the opening Alborada. Capriccio Espagnol is not a profound piece of music, but it is an enormously enjoyable one, and Rimsky-Korsakov knew it. "All in all" he wrote "the Capriccio is undoubtedly a purely external piece, but vividly brilliant for all that".

R.G. Bratby, 1999


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