Tchaikovsky, Italian Cappriccio

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovski was fifty years old when he received Mrs. von Meck's last letter. In the letter, she announced that as a result of financial problems she was forced to suspend the patronage with which she had supported him for thirteen years. But the sad truth is that Nadezhda von Meck had finally decided to face the facts: her epistolary friend of so many years was embracing a sexual option that denied forever the possibility of a loving relationship between her and Piotr. Not wanting to harm him, she alleged a fictitious and definitive economic bankruptcy to make any future contact with the musician impossible.

In addition to giving him an allowance of 6,000 rubles a year – in monthly payments that he began to send to Piotr regularly since late 1877 –, Nadezhda had self-imposed the task of promoting Tchaikovski's music in the European capitals, encouraging his editors to publish his works and convince theater owners to perform them. A widow of an industrialist linked to the railways and heiress of a large fortune, Nadezhda had a number of farms and properties scattered throughout Russia, to which Piotr was invited year after year to compose at ease, in complete solitude, unless we count the service personnel left there by Nadezhda for her friend's attention. Then, Nadezhda would move to a nearby farm. Occasionally, their carriages crossed, and also their eyes through the curtains. At night, each one sat down to write to the other their respective letter telling the experience.

Nadezhda von Meck (1831 - 1894)

This unique relationship as unlikely as true proved to be an invaluable help when Piotr fell into a deep depression after leaving his wife Antonina Milyukova, with whom he hardly remained married for two months, in 1877. Nadezhda's letters became the emotional support the tormented musician urgently required. In the affectionate words of his protectress, Piotr found the energy needed to recover the physical and emotional balance that his creative activity demanded. In search of his inner peace, Piotr travelled to Switzerland, then visited Paris and later toured Italy: Florence, Venice, Milan, San Remo. At the end of 1880, he was in Rome, quite recovered.

In Italy, he had encountered an atmosphere completely different from Russia's, and the country had made a pleasant impression on him. He loved all the cities where he passed through, and some places would be a source of inspiration for some of his most beautiful pages. The symphonic poem Capriccio Italiano is one of them. Composed in Rome in that year, it is a bright and delightful work, which justifies until today its vast and lasting popularity. Tchaikovski, aware of the bright future of his creation, told Nadezhda on February 17, 1880:

"...I have already completed the sketches for an Italian fantasia on folk tunes for which I believe a good fortune may be predicted. It will be effective, thanks to the delightful tunes which I have succeeded in assembling partly from anthologies, partly from my own ears in the streets."

Capriccio Italiano, opus 45
The work is in a single movement, with three independent sections:
Andante un poco rubato.
Pochissimo più mosso (4:03)
Allegro moderato (10:45)

After a brief bugle call, inspired by a bugle call Tchaikovsky heard daily in his rooms at the Hotel Constanzi, next door to the barracks of the Royal Italian Cuirasseurs, a stoic, heroic, unsmiling melody is played by the strings. Eventually, this gives way to music sounding as if it could be played by an Italian street band, beginning in the winds and ending with the whole orchestra. Next, a lively march ensues, followed by a lively tarantella.

The rendition is by the Macau Youth Symphony Orchestra, seconded by members of the Prague Philharmonic. Recording of August 2010, in Prague.