Tchaikovsky's Capriccio italien is one of the composer's most beloved and frequently performed orchestral works. Written in 1880 during his trip to Rome, it is often seen as Tchaikovsky's happy response to the sights and sounds of Italy and ‘as a token of gratitude for the recovery of his psychological balance’ in the aftermath of his disastrous marriage (Capriccio Preface, p. 6). A few months later, almost as soon as he had finished the Capriccio, Tchaikovsky wrote The Year 1812 (commonly known as the 1812 Overture) in response to a commission from his publisher. Both the Capriccio and 1812 have enjoyed great popularity in the concert repertoire, and Polina Vaidman's new critical editions of the works contribute insightful information for the study and performance of this music.

Vaidman's edition of Capriccio italien comes in both full- and study-score formats, and offers a clean, detailed and polished copy of this popular piece. Drawing extensively on Tchaikovsky's letters to family and friends, Vaidman situates Capriccio italien within the context of Tchaikovsky's life and outlines the circumstances surrounding the work's composition. Tchaikovsky drafted the Capriccio in about a month, between January and February 1880, and then orchestrated it in May of the same year after he had returned to Russia. The piece was released the following autumn, by the P.I. Jurgenson publishing house, and it had its premiere in Moscow on 6 December 1880, where it was an immediate success. A performance in St Petersburg on 26 December, however, met with harsh criticism. Indeed, Tchaikovsky complained bitterly to his close friend and patron Mme von Meck that the Petersburg critics, César Cui being prominent among them, ‘unanimously revile me in the most disrespectful manner because of the Capriccio italien’ (Preface, p. 7). Cui summed up the criticism, aimed at perceived vulgarity and lack of emotional depth in the piece, when he acknowledged the music's ‘brilliant exterior’ but dismissed the work as ‘poor in inner values’, adding that it was ‘a worthwhile addition to the repertoire of outdoor bands’ (p. 7).Footnote ¹ Despite this initial disparagement, however, Capriccio italien garnered enormous popular acclaim at its Russian premieres and has remained a favourite in the concert repertory to this day.

The Year 1812 had a rather different, and less carefree, genesis, resulting as it did from an unwanted commission. Tchaikovsky composed the piece for the festivities commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the Russian victory over Napoleon and the twenty-fifth anniversary of Tsar Alexander II's reign; the celebrations of these events were to take place in the spring of 1881. At the instigation of Nikolai Rubinstein, Petr Jurgenson wrote to Tchaikovsky asking him to prepare an overture for the opening of the All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition or for the Tsar's jubilee celebrations, or a cantata for the consecration of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Tchaikovsky was not keen to fulfil the commission. ‘I find nothing more distasteful than to have to write something for some kind of celebration’, he complained to Mme von Meck (1812 Preface, n.p.). ‘What can one write’, he continued, ‘other than banalities and noisy platitudes?’ (Preface, n.p.). Still, he accepted the commission, peppered the new work with quotations from other music (including his opera Voevoda, his arrangement of a Russian dance song, the Russian and French national anthems, and a prayer from the Orthodox liturgy) and, by his own account, completed the piece in a little over a month. The event for which he had chosen to compose was the consecration of the Cathedral, yet he had produced anything but a sacred work.

The Year 1812 was first performed in 1882, a year later than intended, in the enormous hall of the All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition, and not at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour as had been planned. There were several reasons for the change. The Tsar had been assassinated in March 1881, and all festivities had been postponed. Moreover, Tchaikovsky had written a ‘very loud and noisy’ overture (by his own description) in which there was ‘nothing of artistic value’ (Preface, n.p.). Unsuited to the church, it was appropriate only for the concert hall. Despite the composer's opinion of the piece, and the odd juxtaposition of bombastic music with ecclesiastical dedication, some critics praised The Year 1812 for its beauty and grandeur and compared it favourably to Beethoven's Wellington's Victory. Others found it banal, one eyewitness commenting in a Petersburg newspaper that the music ‘calls forth but one desire – “If only it would end soon!”’Footnote ² Eventually, however, recognizing its popularity as a crowd-pleaser, Tchaikovsky conducted the work many times on concerts, both at home and abroad, over the rest of his life.

Vaidman's editorial work on the critical scores of Capriccio italien and The Year 1812 is solid, and the sources are unproblematic. Beyond the accuracy of the scores themselves, the scholarly quality of her editions is apparent in her biographical prefaces, which appear in German and English, and in her critical reports in German. Vaidman has considered Tchaikovsky's manuscript sources, sketches (where extant), autograph scores and first-edition proofs in her editorial decisions. Tchaikovsky was intimately involved in preparing and checking the first editions of both works. In the case of Capriccio italien, he did not have the autograph in hand when checking the first-edition proofs; with The Year 1812, he read the proofs three times. Having firmly established, therefore, that Tchaikovsky proofread and authorized the first editions of both pieces, Vaidman takes the Fassung letzter Hand approach, in which the first edition of each work serves as the most authoritative source. Any discrepancies with the final autographs are minor and are carefully noted in Vaidman's critical reports.

Vaidman also identifies several other extant sources for the works and shows that she has checked editorial decisions against these sources when necessary. For example, the final autograph of The Year 1812 is complete, and it was used by Jurgenson as the basis for the first edition. An incomplete set of string parts also survives from Jurgenson's first edition of the orchestra parts, though the complete set of orchestra parts is lost. Moreover, Tchaikovsky made piano reductions of the 1812 Overture, for two and four hands, respectively, which Jurgenson published in 1882.Footnote ³ A second edition of the full score of the overture appeared in 1892, also by Jurgenson, but it contains some errors, and there is no evidence that Tchaikovsky proofread it. Vaidman has clearly consulted all the relevant sources.

Breitkopf & Härtel's issuance of these new editions thus makes scholarly scores available for two popular and much-published works. Given the designation Urtext, yet the unproblematic nature of the sources, it seems that some additional scholarly questions might have been raised. They might concern the source of the Italian music that Tchaikovsky used extensively in the Capriccio or the meaning of his disparate quotations in The Year 1812.Footnote ⁴ Other matters perhaps worthy of attention in the Capriccio include Tchaikovsky's orchestration techniques (praised even by Cui), his debt to ‘Glinka's Spanish Fantasies’ (Capriccio Preface, p. 6) – a reference to Souvenir d'une nuit d’été à Madrid, also known as the Second Spanish Overture Footnote ⁵ – or his methods of fashioning a successful orchestral work based primarily on prelest, or ‘attractive sound’, rather than large-scale structure that provides what Roland John Wiley calls ‘long-term coherence’.Footnote ⁶ However, these questions may not have much to do with the scores themselves. Vaidman's editions present a well-defined biographical context for Capriccio italien and The Year 1812; and her scores are accurate, readable, clear in their performance directions and accessible for both performers and scholars. They are commendable critical editions and timely counterparts to the many popular scores of these well-known pieces.