Capriccio for piano and orchestra was composed by Igor Stravinsky in Nice, in 1926-
29, the second edition - 1949. First performance - December 6, 1929, Paris (Salle
Pleyel) by the author and orchestra conducted by Ernest Ansermet.
There are two versions of why Stravinsky wrote this concerto:
1. Stravinsky designed Capriccio as a virtuoso instrument that would allow him to
make a living playing the piano. The Capriccio, along with the Concerto for Piano
and Winds, belonged to the catalog of bread works that Stravinsky composed to sup-
port himself after running from the Russian Revolution to live in Western Europe. I
think that this version exists more as a beautiful story than real facts, because the sec -
ond version says the following:
2. Stravinsky wrote this work as a continuation of his creative work in the field of pi-
ano concerto after the highly successful Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
(1924), as evidenced by one of his statements in an interview: “In recent years I have
been invited so often to play my Concerto ( the number of my performances reached
a significant number of forty), that I decided it was time to introduce the public to a
new work for piano and orchestra. This prompted me to write a new concerto, to
which I gave the title "Capriccio" as more consistent with the character of his music."
Unlike the previous work written in this genre (concerto for piano and winds), a sig-
nificant place in the capriccio is occupied by a concertino, in which not only the solo
piano participates, but also various ensembles of orchestral instruments. One of these
groups is highlighted in the score as a concertino string quartet (strings are divided
into concertino and ripieni groups according to the concerto grosso type). In Capric-
cio, along with the pianist, violinists, violists, cellists and even double basses perform
solos. Thus, among the performers of the composition, the baroque type of ensemble
and interpretation of solo instruments are clearly expressed.
"In this concerto I followed the old interpretation of this genre," Stravinsky reported
to readers of a Parisian magazine in 1935, "I contrasted the main concertizing instru-
ment in the orchestral ensemble with either several instruments or whole groups of
also concertizing instruments. In this way the principle of competition was pre-
served".
The capriccio includes three movements performed attacca:
I Part - Presto ( 132), Doppio movimento (=66)
II Part - Andante rapsodico (=108)
III part - Allegro cappricciozo ma tempo giusto (=96)
The first movement is lively, moving, characterized by a combination of Baroque
concertization and ragtime rhythms.
The second movement is slow, built on an alternation of quieter and more lively
episodes, written in A-B-A form.
The third movement is toccata-type in rondo form.
Stravinsky did not reject his inspiration from the music of Weber, whom he himself
called "the prince of music" and Mendelssohn when creating the first two parts of the
capriccio.
The Allegro capriccioso movement that would become the finale was begun first, in
Nice on Christmas Day 1928, and provided the musical material from which the other
movements grew. It was followed by the second movement, completed at Echarvines,
near Talloires, on 13 September 1929, and then by the opening Presto.
Also interesting is the diagram of the tonal plan of the first part of the capriccio, in
which one can clearly see the functional formula T-D-S-T, characteristic of the
Baroque form:
Stravinsky always stuck to his favorite motto: con tempo - together with time.
"Contemporary music," Stravinsky said, "is the most interesting music ever written,
and the present moment is the most exciting in the history of music. It has always
been so."
For all the stylistic parallels with music of past eras, Capriccio is a twentieth-century
work, signs of which can be heard in every bar of the score, showing themselves
clearly in all the parameters of the musical texture as well as in the attitude to har-
mony and rhythms.
It is concluded that, taking as a basis the compositional idea of the baroque concert,
assimilating stylistic models from various eras within one composition, Stravinsky
creates an independent, modern composition, which is one of the options for the com-
poser’s “neoclassical” interpretation of the concert genre.
