A `Quixote' your ears can see

02.23.08
Lynn Harrell
The Charlotte Observer

An acquaintance of mine says you can divide people into two groups: those who like the book, and those who like the movie. Is there a film of Cervantes' "Don Quixote" to offer the choice? Even if not, there is an alternative: Richard Strauss' version for orchestra.

It projects the story on the silver screen of the ear. To get the picture, listeners have to let their imagination go to work. And the players have to throw themselves into their parts.

The musicians held up their end of it Friday night. The Charlotte Symphony, after 76 years of existence, finally got around to playing Strauss' 110-year-old tone poem. It brought in a couple of commanding sonic actors for the leading roles.

Lynn Harrell played the cello part that embodies Quixote, and he was fearless. When Quixote was tilting at windmills or attacking sheep, Harrell dug into the music with a crazy-man ferocity. Yet he drew back to a whisper to take Quixote's nighttime ruminations into a dream world. And at the close, where the sane-again Quixote takes leave of the world, Harrell's warmth and tenderness returned the old man's dignity.

At the head of the trio of instruments that portray Sancho, violist Nokuthula Ngewenyama treated the music to a zest and poise that made him more than Quixote's sidekick.

And the orchestra, led by Christof Perick, played in musical cinemascope. It began as simply as a storyteller saying "Once upon a time..."

But it soon was playing as vividly as Harrell. The winds squealed to represent the flock of sheep. The brasses' rumble propelled Quixote's illusory ride through the air. The strings joined in with Harrell to amplify Quixote's wildness and to make his lyricism gleam.

Those strings did yeoman service: They were up against extra-large woodwind and brass sections, but they were rarely drowned out. Perick controlled things adroitly.

Perick also dovetailed the orchestra neatly with Harrell in Antonin Dvorak's tuneful little Rondo, where everyone played buoyantly. And Perick brought just a hint of Straussian drama to Franz Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. Amid the first movement's tautness and the second's songful lilt, Perick brought out extra dashes of impact -- such as a distant rumble of double-bass thunder to start the tension building. Schubert can be cinematic, too.