TROUBADISC Composers

Hardly any other work could have followed more seamlessly on Ysaÿe’s 'Spanish' Sonata No. 6 than the Capriccio composed in 1944 by Joaquín Rodrigo (1901- 1999). Rodrigo’s hugely popular 'Concierto de Aranjuez' for guitar and orchestra (1939) made him the most popular and frequently performed Spanish composer since the Renaissance. He studied with Paul Dukas in Paris and honed his artistic ethos on his encounter with his fellow countryman Manuel de Falla. In 1943 he completed his Concierto de estío for violin and orchestra, which was premièred the following year by Madrilene Enrique Iniesta Cano. In that same year 1944 he wrote his Capriccio (Offrande a Sarasate) for Iniesta, who gave the work its first public hearing in Madrid on
8 January 1946. Here, with an amazingly adept and ingratiating treatment of the violin, Rodrigo combines the folk idiom of the Sarasate tradition with the contrasting exoticisms of the French style espagnole, allowing violinists to produce firework displays of breathtaking brilliance. We may safely assume that the immense technical demands of the Capriccio received their finishing touches in close collaboration with Iniesta. Rodrigo thereby bequeathed to his countrymen a pièce de resistance of richhued impressionistic neo-classicism and daredevil virtuosity for the solo violin.