In the summer of 1887, after the passing of his friend Alexander Borodin, Rimsky-Korsokov decided to complete Borodin’s unfinished opera, Prince Igor. At the time, Rimsky-Korsakov was staying in a village along the banks of Lake Nelai, where he would turn back to the sketches of a violin fantasia using Spanish themes. This time, however, he would use them for a purely orchestral work, a dazzling, colourful, picture that became one of his most popular works.

The première, on December 17, was a tremendous success, and the audience demanded a repetition of it. Rimsky-Korsakov afterwards pointed out that the brilliance of this work is not in the orchestration, but in the actual construction of it as an orchestral work.

“The change of timbres, the felicitous choice of melodic designs and figuration patterns, exactly suiting each kind of instrument, brief virtuoso cadenzas for solo instruments, the rhythm of the percussion instruments, etc., constitute here the very essence of the composition, and not its garb or orchestration. The Spanish themes, of dance character, furnished me with rich material for putting in use multiform orchestral effects. All in all, the Capriccio is undoubtedly a purely external piece, but vividly brilliant for all that. I was a little less successful in its third section (Alborado in B-flat major). where the brasses somewhat drown the melodic designs of the wood-winds ; but this is very easy to remedy if the conductor will pay attention to it and moderate the indications of the shades of force in the brass instruments by replacing the fortissimo with a simple forte.”
– From the Memoirs; Judy A. Joffe’s translation

– Juan-David Domínguez-Rincón