CAPRICCIO
There’s something about Russia—those long winters, maybe—
which has made many of her best composers come down with
periodic fits of the wanderlust. This has been all to the good,
since the usual remedy for the ailment involved the creation of
all manner of exotic pieces, graced either by the warmth of
personal observation or the ardor of longed-for peregrinations.
On this recording, two celebrated Russian portraits of sunnier
lands to the south get a new musical lease on life. Basking in the
unaccustomed glow of the complete sound spectrum, their
familiar measures are rejuvenated by the crackling sonic realism
and the expansive scope of phase 4 stereo.
Michael Glinka, the so-called Father of Russian Music, is ap-
parently the same gentleman who sired the taste for travel among
Russian composers. (As early as 1830, Glinka began taking what
he was pleased to call rest-cures in Italy, Spain, France and
Germany, staying for years at a time, and finally settling down
in Poland for quite a spell with a few dozen pet birds, two rabbits
and a girl named Angelique). One of his converts was Peter Ilyich
Tchaikovsky. Soon after New Year's Day, 1880, Tchaikovsky pro-
claimed his intention of writing “something on the order of
Glinka’s Spanish Fantasia’) and fortified with so worthy an excuse
for leaving the Russian snows behind him, forthwith began a
long southern vacation. Possibly he was worried that Glinka had
already used up all the best Spanish tunes; in any event,
Tchaikovsky headed for Italy instead, where he cheerfully
soaked up the sun and local color in approximately equal quanti-
ties. He also went around to all sorts of local festivals, poked
about in dusty old music books, and notebook in hand, listened
to the lusty street balladeers of Rome. His room in that city’s
Hotel Constanzi overlooked the barracks of an Italian cavalry
regiment, the Royal Cuirassiers, and even this was a source of
inspiration, since a bugle call was sounded every evening, at
retreat. It was a bright, cheery tune, Tchaikovsky decided, and
so with a little bit of judicious eavesdropping, he jotted down
what was to become the opening trumpet fanfare of his new
piece. With such a wealth of source material on every side, the
composer found that his score was taking shape nicely. On
February 17th, he sent a progress report to his patroness, Mme.
von Meck. “T think my Italian Capriccio has a bright future”,
he wrote: “it will be effective because of the wonderful melodies
I was able to pick up, partly from published collections, and
partly out in the streets with my own ears”. By May of 1880,
Tchaikovsky was back in Russia, fondly recalling his Mediter-
ranean sojurn, and putting the finishing touches on his Capriccio.
“I do not know how much musical worth the piece has”, he
confided in another letter, “but I am already sure that it will
sound well. The orchestration is effective and brilliant”.
In this opinion, of course, the musical world has long con-
curred: the Capriccio Italien does sound well, Certainly it has
won no prizes for sublimity of musical thought, but its immense
popularity remains undiminished after more than eighty years,
and it still stands as one of the most dazzling showpieces in the
orchestral repertoire. The melodies jostle one another in joyful
abundance—warm and sunny in the best Italian manner, they
are yet imbued with the full dramatic impact of Tchaikovsky's
slavic temperament, soaring and tumbling in a whirl of sumptu-
ous sound, Towards the end, the music bursts into the vibrant
rhythms of the tarantella—Tchaikovsky’s final homage to his
Italian hosts, before the score sweeps to its jubilant, triple-forte
climax. %
Produced for records by Tony D'Amato
Recording Engineer; Arthur Lilley
hIMORKRY-KORSAKOV—CAPRICCIO ESPAGNOL
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was another Russian composer who
did quite a bit of country-hopping in his day, He joined the
Navy, to begin with, and even though he never was much good
as a sailor, he put in his three years, and made the most of
shore leaves in dozens of ports from the Mediterranean to South
America, not excluding New York. One of the few European
countries he missed was Spain, so naturally Spain is the one
place he picked to write a Capriccio about.
As things turned ont, though, Rimsky couldn’t have written a
piece more thoroughly saturated with the tang of Iberia, had
he taken out a three-year lease on a Gypsy cave in Granada.
The passionate spirit and flamboyant rhythms of Spanish music
obviously appealed to his already highly developed taste for
exotic instrumentation, and as he set to work on his score, he
took pains to make sure that (in his own words) “the Capriccio
was to glitter with dazzling orchestral color”. This, hy the way,
meant discarding the original concept of the piece. Rimsky had
planned it first as a virtuoso rhapsody for solo violin (more or
less as a sequel to his earlier “Fantasy on Russian Themes”), but
he. now realized that to produce the vivid tonal canvas he had
in mind, he would have to draw on the resources of the full
symphony orchestra, and then some. ,
It was, then, as a purely orchestral piece that the Capriccio
went into rehearsal at Saint Petersburg, and it racked up its first
smashing conquest within ten minutes. The musicians themselves
were so excited and enthusiastic about it that they burst into
spontaneous applause after the first section, hereafter interrupting
the rehearsal again and again to cheer the composer and to praise
his music. The night of the premiere, November 12, 1887, the
orchestra’s delight was matched by that of the audience. Swept
away by the dashing grandeur of the music, the people stood
and cheered, loudly demanding and eventually getting an encore
of the entire piece.
The Capriccio Espagnol begins with an “Alborada”, which is
a morning song that certain incurably romantic Spaniards
evidently like to play underneath a lady’s window to wake her
up in gentle, properly ladylike fashion. Rimsky didn’t know all
this, naturally (or else he just didn’t care), because his Alborado
explodes like some enormous alarm clock, splattering hnge globs
of sound all over the place, and in general getting the Capriccio
off to a rousing start. In a contrasting section, the violin and
clarinet both have sweeping solos, after which the Alborada therfie
returns, brilliant as ever.
The second movement is a more subdued affair, with the
horns sounding a genial theme, and other instruments entering
in various combinations to play an attractive set of variations
on it. A flute solo then marks the transition to the third movement,
which, if the truth be told, is really nothing more than the first
movement Alborada in disguse, and somehow it sounds even
gayer the second time around.
The fourth movement bears the collective title Scene and
Gypsy Dance. The Scene is made in turn by horns and trumpets,
solo violins, flute, clarinet and harp, all of whom show off with
flourishes and cadenzas before the full orchestra returns to sing
the sensuous, mildly oriental Gypsy Song. As the intensity
increases and the pace grows more animated, the fourth move-
ment gives way to the fifth, and the Gypsy Song becomes a Gypsy
Dance—a zesty, vivacious Fandango. At the very end, the original
Alborada melody returns for a final fling, and the Capriccio goes
up in a stunning burst of sound.
“All in all”, wrote Rimsky-Korsakov in his autobiography, “the
Capriccio is undoubtedly a purely external piece, but vividly
brilliant for all that”. Today, as the score nears eighty years of
perennial and ever-growing popularity, it might be well to recall
the more ardent sentiments expressed in a letter which Rimsky
received at about the time of the premiere, in 1887. “Your
Spanish Caprice is a colossal masterpiece”, it said in part, “and
you may regard yourself as the greatest master of the present
day”, The letter was signed by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
.. Robert Sherman
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿