Tchaikovsky wrote this piece for and with the help of Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, a German cellist and fellow-professor at the Moscow Conservatory.
Part of the difficulty of the piece lies in this continuous and prolonged format, devoid of the usual extended orchestral tuttis allowing the soloist to rest for a few moments.
Tchaikovsky had rarely been attracted to the variation form before, except for an eloquent piece for piano solo in F major, Op.
In a traditional concerto format, structural complexities and dramatic issues that would have clashed with the 18th-century detachment and finesse could not have been avoided.
While the tasteful invention and refined craftsmanship that Tchaikovsky admired in classical-era music is thoroughly in evidence, the structure he intended in his ordering of variations was subverted by the work's dedicatee.
Tchaikovsky scholar Dr. David Brown points out that, in the composer's original order, the first five variations show "a progressive expansion and evolution of the theme's structure ... the sixth briefly recalling the original phrases of the theme before the seventh, C major variation, new in meter and key," reveals "a vast melodic sweep," providing "the real peak of the piece," after which the final variation (the one Fitzenhagen eventually jettisoned) would guide listeners back toward the point where the piece had started.
[2] As music critic Michael Steinberg points out, "Fitzenhagen intervened considerably in shaping what he considered 'his' piece.
"[6] Fitzenhagen was proud of the success he had in performing the work,[7] and in a report he wrote Tchaikovsky after playing it at the Wiesbaden Festival in June 1879, he gave a clue as to why he rearranged the order of variations as he did.
[2] One of Fitzenhagen's students, Anatoliy Brandukov, described an incident eleven years later:“On one of my visits to Pyotr Ilyich [in 1889] I found him very upset, looking as though he was ill.
'"[10]The Variations were played in Fitzenhagen's order until the Russian cellist Victor Kubatsky started researching the piece for himself.
[12] Cellists who have recorded Tchaikovsky's original version have included Sviatoslav Knushevitsky, Alexander Rudin, Miklós Perényi, Steven Isserlis, Raphael Wallfisch, Johannes Moser, Julian Lloyd Webber, Pieter Wispelwey and Jiří Bárta.
In 2009, Catalin Rotaru played the Variations on a Rococo Theme in a transcription for the double bass for a radio orchestra in Bucharest, Romania.
In 2010, Maxim Rysanov played the Variations on a Rococo Theme in his transcription for viola in a London Promenade Concert.