Of Doleful Countenance

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Musical links, not literary ones, generally form the basis of orchestral programs, but last week at Davies Symphony Hall, the San Francisco Symphony took a novel approach. On the program were two works inspired by Cervantes’ 17th-century masterpiece, Don Quixote — first, Manuel de Falla’s 1923 one-act opera, Master Peter’s Puppet Show, and, after intermission, Richard Strauss’ 1897 tone poem, Don Quixote.

I could imagine this pairing being of particular interest to aficionados of Spanish literature. For music lovers, it proved less of an attraction. Thursday’s performance, which drew one of the smallest crowds I’ve ever seen in Davies — one that thinned throughout the evening as patrons made early exits — seemed to highlight the limits, rather than the possibilities, of musical storytelling.

Still, the program was not without its merits, and it clearly demonstrated one thing: that, given the identical source material, two composers will come up with utterly divergent responses.

Cervantes’ story of the wandering knight-errant and his faithful sidekick, Sancho Panza, is the point of departure for both works, written a quarter century apart. The similarities pretty much end there. Strauss’ score faithfully follows the outline of the novel, creating a broad and detailed canvas utterly devoid of the work’s original Spanish flavor. In contrast, Falla’s stage work, written for chamber orchestra and three voices (and incorporating the composer’s own libretto, which borrows liberally from Cervantes), hews to the work’s Iberian roots while limiting its narrative scope to a single episode from the novel.

Presiding over this evening of literary log-rolling was Charles Dutoit. The Swiss conductor, most recently named chief conductor and music adviser of the Philadelphia Orchestra, is always a welcome podium guest at Davies Hall, and his gifts as a symphonic colorist were employed to often gorgeous effect throughout the evening.

This was especially true in the second half’s performance of Don Quixote, with SFS principal cellist Michael Grebanier in the soloist’s chair. Once you get past the notion that Strauss’ view of the Spanish hero is an essentially Germanic one — the composer considered this score a companion work to his Ein Heldenleben — its beauties are manifold, and Dutoit elicited them in one shining episode after another.

Deftly Paced

The score is cast in three movements: an extended Introduction, Theme and Variations, and Finale. Dutoit set a leisurely pace in the opening pages, delineating each character’s theme — including a “knightly and gallant” phrase for woodwinds depicting Don Quixote — in deft, elegant strokes. He let the performance build organically, and the title character’s heroic adventures (including Variation VIII, with its loudly capsizing boat) were painted with plenty of brio.

Yet, Dutoit and the orchestra had their finest moments in the score’s episodes of lush Romanticism. Variation III, which depicts an extended exchange between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, conjured the radiance of Der Rosenkavalier, with the orchestra’s strings producing wonderfully singing sound, the woodwinds sounding just as unified in their responses, and the brass gleaming. Throughout the performance, Grebanier negotiated the pivotal solo part with intensity and allure, and his colleagues, most notably principal violist Yun Jie Liu and concertmaster Alexander Barantschik, played with bewitching tone.

Before intermission, the first half was devoted to Master Peter’s Puppet Show. Falla’s score was doubtless new to many in the audience; the Symphony’s only previous performances were in 1957 (when Conductor Enrique Jorda led a team of vocal soloists that included baritone Heinz Blankenburg and tenor James Schwabacher). The writing for reduced orchestra sounded crisp and colorful.

The vocal parts, however, are far less engaging, and the episode from the novel, in which Don Quixote bursts into a puppet show and attempts to rescue two of its characters from the Moors, is described in the kind of detail that quickly becomes tedious. This was Don Quixote on a decidedly small scale. Still, the soloists made the most of their assignments. As El Trujaman (a part usually filled by a boy soprano), soprano Awet Andemicael sang with honeyed tone and wide-eyed emphasis. Tenor Gustavo Pena was an elegant Master Peter, and baritone Hector Vasquez invested the Don Quixote part with firm tone and just enough of the character’s requisite swagger.

Georgia Rowe is a Bay Area arts writer. Her work has appeared in Opera News, Gramophone, The San Jose Mercury News, The Oakland Tribune, The San Francisco Examiner, and The Contra Costa Times.