Daniel Harding conducts Strauss’s “Don Quixote”

Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote is a “satyr play” whose (anti-)hero is taken from the 1605 novel El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. The author Miguel de Cervantes pokes fun at his contemporaries’ fondness for chivalric novels and tells the story of an impoverished nobleman who literally loses his mind as a result of reading such novels. In the tone poem, the solo cello represents Don Quixote, while the solo viola represents his portly squire Sancho Panza – played here by orchestra principals Ludwig Quandt and Diyang Mei.

The conductor is Daniel Harding, who made his sensational debut with the Philharmoniker at the age of just 21 as Claudio Abbado’s assistant and stand-in, and has been a regular guest conductor with the orchestra ever since. At the beginning of the concert, following Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture, Harding presents Hans Werner Henze’s Barcarola. The work, which brings together ancient mythology and the theme of death, was composed in 1979 in memory of the composer and conductor Paul Dessau. The music reflects the experiences of a dying man crossing the River Styx, with Henze deliberately associating the “trumpet and trombone calls” with the mythological ferryman Charon, who guides the souls of the dead to the underworld. The subject is captured vividly in music, with all kinds of quotations – including from Mahler’s Ninth Symphony – opening up different associative spaces.

Berliner Philharmoniker

Daniel Harding

Diyang Mei

Ludwig Quandt