Capriccio Espagnol

Rimsky-Korsakov first planned a virtuoso fantasy for violin and orchestra on Spanish themes and turned it instead into a piece for orchestra alone, finished in the summer of 1887. He conducted the first performance in St Petersburg that October. At the rehearsals the players applauded after every movement, and he dedicated the printed score to all sixty-seven of them, listed by name. He objected afterwards to critics who called the orchestration brilliant, insisting that the scoring was the substance of the piece rather than a coat of paint on it — the themes are inseparable from the instruments that carry them.