Something for Thursday

Sticking with a recent flare-up of a longtime obsession of mine, the music of the Russian Romantic and post-Romantic composers, here is the Capriccio Espagnol by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This piece is in five short movements, and constitutes something of a musical 'travelogue', intended by Rimsky-Korsakov to convey what he thought to be the musical flavors of Spain.


In the days of CDs, this work almost always showed up as the pairing on discs containing Rimsky-Korsakov's longer, and possibly most famous, work Scheherazade. R-K was one of the great genius orchestrators, with an astonishing ability to use the instruments of the orchestra to create tableaus of enormous color and range. Enjoy!