The documents in the personal archive of the great Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) cast light in detail on the history of many of his works, but on the “Variations on a Rococo Theme” op. 33 we only find a short note in a letter dd. 1876 to his brother Anatoly: “I am composing variations for Cello solo and an orchestra.” The piece bears a dedication to the celoist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, then a professor at Moscow Conservatory. He was not only an erudite educator, concertmaster of the Russian Music Society, but also a remarkable chamber musician – he participated in the premieres of Tchaikovsky’s three string quartets. But whether Fitzenhagen was the commissioner of the Variations or whether his interest in the instrument came from his close friendship with Karl Davidov, whom the composer called “the king of all cellists of our century,” remains a mystery.

In Russkie Vedomosti, the composer wrote: ‘The virtuoso flourishing of the cello is in its last stages of decline, its repertoire has not been enhanced by new works for many years’. Up to that point, the romantic list of major works for the instrument was really not extensive: concertos by Robert Schumann, Antonin Dvorak and Camille Saint-Saëns, and by the Russian composers Nikolai Afanasiev, Nikolai Rubinstein and Karl Davidov.  Tchaikovsky decided to write not a concerto but variations in the concerto style on a rococo theme. This sensuous and gallant style of music appeared in the twilight of the Baroque – its name comes from the French word rocaille (shell), and it is characterised by flamboyant ornamentation and a more intimate expression of emotion. “What is Rococo? I think it is the light carefree joy,” Tchaikovsky once said. Antiquity in the spirit of modernity, an idea he projected in the Variations and later in the Fourth Orchestral Suite, Mozartiana, dedicated to the great Amadeus, whom he idolised. It was premiered on November 18^th 1877 in Moscow under the baton of Nikolai Rubinstein, with Wilhelm Fitzenhagen as soloist. It gave ‘exquisite pleasure’ to the audience. Their first performance abroad (at the Wiesbaden Festival in 1879) caused a furore. The soloist was called to the encore three times, the present Franz Liszt congratulated Fitzenhagen with the words, “I am impressed by you, you played superbly, this is real music”.

Tchaikovsky himself did not much like that composition, which turned into a modern representation of virtuosity for any performer. He even readily allowed the soloist’s intervention in the score. In the run-up to its printing, the publisher Jürgensohn indignantly informed the composer: ‘That odious Fitzenhagen! He necessarily wants to rework your piece, to obviolate it, and says that you have given him complete freedom. My God! Tchaikovsky revu et corrige par Fitzenhagen!!!” (edited and corrected by Fitzenhagen) Perhaps the performer’s admiration for the Variations, the cordiality with which he concertized them, prevented Tchaikovsky from intervening. Thus the work became popular in Fitzenhagen’s editorship. The original, an introduction and theme followed by eight variations and a coda, has seven variations in the cellist’s setting. The eighth variation has been dropped; some of the variations have been interchanged. Fitzenhagen added his own virtuosic passages and nuances, dynamic tints and accents, adapting the Variations to his own taste and the traditions of the German cello school. But despite all this, Tchaikovsky’s poetic and romantic in a Russian way “rococo” music shines in all its exquisite splendour! After many years of oblivion, the piece was revived from the composer’s archives and performed on April 24^th,  1941 in Moscow by Daniil Shafran under the baton of Alexander Melik-Pashayev.