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Tchaikovsky and his brother Modest became happy tourists when they visited Rome in 1880. It was a trip that inspired the great Russian composer to produce one of his most brilliant works, a kind of 'Italian Fantasia' derived from the tunes and songs he heard in the streets as well as those he found in published collections. However, he was rudely awakened in the mornings by bugle calls from a nearby military barracks and it is those which open the piece. The solemn melody which follows soon gives way to the kind of street music he heard as he walked about the 'Eternal City' and the work concludes with a whirling, brilliantly scored 'tarantella.' The performance seen here was given in Rome in 2011 by Vasily Petrenko and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and is uploaded with all due acknowledgements to RAI.
