Piotr Tchaikovsky
“Variations on a Rococo Theme” for cello and orchestra in A major, op. 33 Piotr Tchaikovsky “Variations on a Rococo Theme” for cello and orchestra in A major, op. 33

Pyotr Tchaikovsky liked to surround himself with the heroes of his intellectual world. On the walls of his sitting room hung portraits of great composers of the past – Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Glinka – and his bookshelves contained world literature from Dante and Shakespeare to Heine and Pushkin, as well as philosophical writings. The heart of his music library, however, was “a cabinet with the splendid Leipzig edition of the complete works of Mozart,” recalled the cellist Julian Poplavsky, who visited Tchaikovsky about two weeks before his death. As a reader and as a composer, Tchaikovsky carried on a dialogue with history, and the classical era – the musical rococo – seems to have been particularly close to him. The Rococo Variations, composed for the cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, who came from Seesen in the Harz region, are likewise an expression of Tchaikovsky’s affinity with the style of Mozart’s time. Fitzenhagen had become a professor at the Moscow Conservatory in 1870 and had already taken part in the premieres of Tchaikovsky’s three string quartets. In 1876, he asked the composer for a piece for his own instrument – and soon received a theme with variations for cello and orchestra.

A short introduction stands at the beginning, like a curtain slowly rising on a melancholy hero. The 16‑bar theme imitates the rococo style with formally deceptive authenticity, yet breathes the emotional world of its composer, whose passionate nature emerges in a cadential turn. A coda for woodwinds over a pedal point returns occasionally, providing a rustic, pastoral contrast – and while the first variation remains within a simple framework, the others, as free character variations, depart increasingly from the scheme: in the third, a kind of valse triste, a ballet dances; the sixth presents itself as a lyrical Russian song; and in the seventh, cello and orchestra fire on all cylinders in antiphonal showmanship. Interspersed are several solo cadenzas in which the cello now sings seductively, now rages furiously. In virtuoso figurations and daring double-stops, it traverses the entire range of the instrument, from its lowest note, B sharp, up to the dizzying heights of E⁴. The work ranks among the most difficult ever composed for the cello up to that point – and, in fact, still today.

Fitzenhagen revised the score for publication, rearranged the order of the variations, removed one, and adapted several passages for his instrument. The notion that this happened against Tchaikovsky’s wishes, as scholarship once assumed, is unlikely: the two remained in contact until the cellist’s early death. After presenting the Rococo Variations in Wiesbaden in 1879 – the first performance abroad – Fitzenhagen wrote to the composer about the great enthusiasm they had met with there, crowning his report with Franz Liszt’s words: “Well, that is at last music once again.”