A Better Approach to “Don Quixote” from DSO

Yesterday evening the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) presented its latest Live from Orchestra Hall webcast. Music Director Jader Bignamini prepared a program that featured both “resident” soloists and one visitor. The “residents,” cellist Wei Yu and violist Eric Nowlin, were first-chair DSO players. However, in this program they were the soloists portraying Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Richard Strauss’ Opus 35 tone poem “Don Quixote.” The visitor was pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, serving as soloist in a performance of Maurice Ravel’s piano concerto in G.

Readers may recall that last weekend Karina Canellakis presented the Strauss tone poem during her visiting conductor appearance with the San Francisco Symphony. They may also recall that my account of that performance was not particularly enthusiastic. While Canellakis gave a convincing interpretation of the score, I came away with the impression that Strauss never really succeeded in interpreting Miguel de Cervantes’ novel as a tone poem.

Sancho Panza’s “other” instruments (screenshot from the performance video)

Last night, however, Bignamini decided that the performance deserved some introduction. Most important was how he observed that the “character studies” were not limited to the solo parts for cello and viola. He began by calling attention to the duo of tenor tuba and bass clarinet, which frequently portrays another side of Panza’s character. Ironically, he never said anything about the solo violin part, performed by Guest Concertmaster Robyn Bollinger, perhaps because it was unclear what, if anything, that extensive solo work had to do with the overall plot.

Equally important was that the video team used the lower left-hand corner of the screen to “announce” each of the sections of the tone poem. This began with the “Introduction,” followed by the first statements of the themes for both the Don and Panza. Next were the labels for each of the ten “fantastic variations,” each of which had a short descriptive title, whose English translation was included on the label. The concluding Finale was also displayed with text to mark the death of the title character.

All of those “labels” were as helpful as they were unobtrusive. More important was how the camera work managed to account for the wealth of inventive instrumental activity permeating the entire ensemble. There was also a clever twist, which could only be achieved through video, during the seventh variation, entitled “The Ride through the Air” in English. One of the cameras was situated in the highest-level balcony. It provided a screen-filling image of the orchestra, after which it “pulled back,” giving the impression that the viewer was, indeed, riding through the air from the “ground level” of the stage to that top balcony.

Nevertheless, the overall structure of this tone poem is far weaker than that of Strauss’ shorter ventures into this genre. The Opus 28 “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” probably offers Strauss’ capacity to present narrative at its best; and Opus 35 never comes close to that standard. Most important may be the fact that not only are the variations not really variations but also the overall management of section-by-section durations is more than a little erratic. In fact the “Introduction” is the second longest section in the entire poem. Only the third variation is longer, while most of the other sections fly by in only a few minutes. (The overall sense is a bit like “Pictures at an Exhibition” as observed by a jogger, rather than someone pausing to reflect over each of the images.)

Fortunately, the Ravel concerto was far more satisfying. As I have previously observed, there is an interesting “companionship” between Ravel’s two piano concertos and George Gershwin’s two major concertante works, the “Rhapsody in Blue” and his “Concerto in F.” As in the Strauss tone poem, there is an abundance of dazzling solo parts in the ensemble to complement the piano work; however, through that “Gershwin connection” Ravel’s rhetoric is far jazzier than anything Strauss could have conceived. The camera work keeping track of both keyboard and ensemble could not have been better. The result was a dazzling experience, which clearly had an impact on the Detroit audience as well as on my own screen viewing.

As expected, the Detroit crowd would not let Thibaudet leave without an encore. He stuck with Ravel, performing the original solo piano version of the “Pavane pour une infante défunte” (pavane for a dead princess). The quietude of his interpretation was the perfect complement to all the razzle-dazzle in his concerto work.

The program began with Carlos Simon’s “Fate Now Conquers,” which was given its premiere performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra in October of 2020. (No information was provided by the webcast.) The title comes from an entry in Ludwig van Beethoven’s journal written in 1815. Simon’s music takes the second movement of Beethoven’s Opus 92 (seventh) symphony as background from which he then develops his own foreground. Perhaps this information was included in the program books for the audience, but it would have been nice if webcast viewers were given their own bit of introduction!