Phone
Tablet - Portrait
Tablet - Landscape
Desktop
Toggle navigation
Performers
Steinway Performers
Albright, Charlie
Anderson, Greg
Arishima, Miyako
Benoit, David
Biegel, Jeffrey
Birnbaum, Adam
Braid, David
Brown, Deondra
Brown, Desirae
Brown, Gregory
Brown, Melody
Brown, Ryan
Caine, Uri
Chen, Sean
Chulochnikova, Tatiana
Deveau, David
Farkas, Gabor
Feinberg, Alan
Fung, David
Gagne, Chantale
Golan, Jeanne
Goodyear, Stewart
Graybil, Matthew
Gryaznov, Vyacheslav
Gugnin, Andrey
Han, Anna
Han, Yoonie
Iturrioz, Antonio
Khristenko, Stanislav
Kim, Daniel
Li, Zhenni
Lin, Jenny
Lo Bianco, Moira
Lu, Shen
Mahan, Katie
Mao, Weihui
Melemed, Mackenzie
Min, Klara
Mndoyants, Nikita
Moutouzkine, Alexandre
Mulligan, Simon
Myer, Spencer
O'Conor, John
O'Riley, Christopher
Osterkamp, Leann
Paremski, Natasha
Perez, Vanessa
Petersen, Drew
Polk, Joanne
Pompa-Baldi, Antonio
Rangell, Andrew
Roe, Elizabeth Joy
Rose, Earl
Russo, Sandro
Schepkin, Sergei
Scherbakov, Konstantin
Shin, ChangYong
Tak, Young-Ah
Ziegler, Pablo
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Back 1 step
Fritz Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler
Caprice viennois, Op. 2
Interpretations
About This Work
Controls
Cover
Artists
Label
Movements
×
Add To Playlist
Success
This selection has been added.
Playlist
Create
Cancel
Confirm
Cancel
About This Work
Fritz Kreisler's Caprice Viennois for violin and piano (or, alternately and by later arrangement, violin and orchestra) embodies in name what almost every one of his other compositions aims toward in spirit: a certain turn-of-the-century Viennese gaiety and grace, as passed through the prism of Kreisler's own good-natured but complex character. Here there is no legerdemain of authorship (the piece is, in fact, one of just a handful of works to which Kreisler applied an opus number and which he initially admitted having authored), and no effort at musical complexity for its own sake. Instead, the Caprice Viennois is just a good three and a half minutes of well-crafted gemütlichkeit with which Kreisler could charm his audiences.
The piece is a caprice in the real sense of the word, shifting musical perspective at a moments notice to afford violinists the opportunity to indulge in some new trick -- like the false harmonics and the strangely aristocratic downward glissando of the opening quasi-cadenza passage, or to invite the listeners to join in enjoying a warm melody (the B major of the andante con moto melody in parallel thirds is warmth itself), all the while bursting forward and holding back, rhapsodically and mock-improvisationally (or, with the liberties that Kreisler himself invariably took with his music, truly improvisationally), with that amazing rhythmic elasticity that Kreisler alone was really able to bring to his music. A middle section, marked brillante and complete with ricochet bowing and rapid repeated notes, brings some fire to the table, but just enough to light the way back to the engaging andante con moto. Two elfin pizzicato chords are tacked onto a much-abbreviated reprise of the opening to draw a delightfully unsentimental conclusion in the same B minor that began the affair.
-- Blair Johnston
×
Add To Playlist
Success
This selection has been added.
Playlist
Create
Cancel
Confirm
Cancel
254F7C274C1D4683BA8ACEF4F198B852