PROGRAM NOTES by Phillip Huscher

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34

Born March 18, 1844, Tikhvin, near Novgorod, Russia. Died June 21, 1908, Liubensk, near Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34

Rimsky-Korsakov composed this work in the summer of 1887 and conducted the first performance on November 12 of that year in Saint Petersburg. The score calls for two and piccolo, two and english horn, two , two , four horns, two , three and , , , , , triangle, , , harp, and strings. Performance time is approximately fifteen minutes.

The Chicago Symphony ’s first subscription concert performances of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol were given at the Auditorium Theatre on March 29 and 30, 1901, with Theodore Thomas conducting. Our most recent subscription concert performances were given at Orchestra Hall on May 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, 2000, with Bobby

McFerrin conducting. The Orchestra first performed this work at the Ravinia Festival on July 31, 1936, with Werner

Janssen conducting, and most recently on July 26, 2003, with Christoph Eschenbach conducting.

Rimsky-Korsakov had never heard an orchestra until his father took him to Saint Petersburg to enroll in the College of Naval

Cadets at the age of twelve. When he attended his first opera there, it was not the stage spectacle or the singing, but the great sound rising from the pit that excited him most. Early in 1857, he wrote home:

Imagine my joy, today I’m going to the theater! I shall see Lucia! I shall hear the enormous orchestra and the tam-tam!

and I shall see how the conductor waves his little stick. In the orchestra 12 violins, 8 violas, 6 cellos, 6 double basses,

3 flutes, 8 clarinets, 6 horns and all that sort of thing.

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Although he already composed music—he had written an “overture” for piano and a number of small pieces—his heart was set on a career in the navy. But by the time he graduated from the College of Naval Cadets in 1856 and was due to set sail on a thirty-month tour of duty, he realized that he wanted to be a composer instead and packed the manuscript of an unfinished symphony to take with him.

In time, Rimsky-Korsakov proved the wisdom of his career change, becoming not only a popular and influential composer

(and the teacher of Stravinsky), but the man who literally wrote the book on how to compose for the instruments of the orchestra. (He probably is the first person to attend Lucia excited by the prospect of hearing the tam-tam.) As much as anyone before or since, he had an ear for distinctive, unconventional, and brilliant orchestral effects. When Tchaikovsky attended the premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol in October 1887, he hailed it as “a colossal masterpiece of instrumentation.”

Unlike most composers, Rimsky-Korsakov did not write at the piano, but composed directly for his instrument—the large virtuoso modern orchestra. “The change of timbres,” he wrote of the Capriccio “the felicitous choice of melodic designs and figuration patterns, exactly suiting each kind of instrument, the brief virtuoso for solo instruments, the rhythm of the percussion instruments and so on, here constitute the very essence of the composition, and not its clothing, i.e., orchestration.”

Rimsky-Korsakov designed this colorful score for the sixty-seven orchestra players of the Saint Petersburg Imperial Opera, no doubt tailoring certain solo passages for his favorites. At the first rehearsal, the musicians enthusiastically applauded each section. Capriccio espagnol is written as five linked movements, each one based on Spanish themes. (The vogue for Spanish music started in Russia in the 1840s, after Mikhail Glinka returned home from a two-year stay in Spain.) The score begins with an alborada, which comes back in the middle and returns at the very end, complete with castanets, to ensure a picture- postcard finale.

For the Record

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra recorded Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol in 1977 with Daniel Barenboim conducting for Deutsche Grammophon. A 1940 performance conducted by Frederick Stock is included on From the

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Archives, vol. 8: A Tribute to Frederick Stock, and a 1962 performance conducted by Leopold Stokowski (on video) has been released by VAI.

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

© by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reproduced; brief excerpts may be quoted if due acknowledgment is given to the author and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs and artists subject to change without notice.

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