Castanets (and triangle) in Capriccio Espagnol

I noticed that in Capriccio espagnol, towards the end, starting a bit before the coda, the castanets are written in triple tremelo, so 32nd notes. Yet in many recordings, they only seem to play them at 16th. This also seems to apply to the triangle.

Recording with castanets doing 16ths :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63WGg9kJ-GQ

Recording with castanets doing 32nd (it seems) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE2iytUTYvM

I haven't seen any live performances so I don't know what's done in practice but here are the recordings I found :

Perfrmances doing 16ths :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_HSpn3tE_A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HiWdZIX39Y

Performances doing 32nd :
I haven't found any live concert recording yet

I looked for percussion excerpts of the piece and it seems like they play 16ths too :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-WlcY1z7K0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t93wOilWyH4

Some try techniques like playing on top of table castanets :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG8bZJ5C-JA

So is it a modern correction of edition mistake or a performance practice ?

Posted Jul 10, 2026, 11:09 AM UTC

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