Don Quixote with companion/servant Sancho Panza
Sunday, January 18, 2026
Golden Hall, Musikverein, Vienna
Sunday-morning with Strauss, Richard Strauss, his two Don pieces, Juan (after Lenau’s telling of the tale) and, based-on-Cervantes’s novel, Quixote (‘Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character’) with Haydn as the tasty Strauss-sandwich filler, offered to Vienna for the third time, and soon in Cologne and Hamburg.
Juan opened the concert, a swashbuckling account (blunt first-appearance timpani aside – one of my hobbyhorses with this music – see below), seductive violin and oboe solos, gorgeous love-making strings, the fiery signalling of the Don’s blasé careering, and heroic horns to signal his damnation to a gloomy underworld.
Quixote was superbly done, the music’s twists and turns, and complex detailing, vividly conveying this Don’s adventures, such as encountering unruly sheep. With members of the Vienna Philharmonic as the principal soloists, this was a rendition by colleagues of chamber-music interaction: cellist Péter Somodari a forthright Quixote of shapely phrase and restless imagination, tender tones, too, while Tobias Lea’s outspoken viola suggested Sancho Panza as not always knowing his place and ripe of comment. With Harding ensuring pictorial incident, tied symphonically, and the orchestra (Albena Danailova, concertmaster) totally at-one with the music, and with each other, this was an absorbing performance of cinematic relish culminating in Quixote’s demise, Somodari touching the heartstrings with his eloquence and final breath. The work was signed-off with simplicity.
Haydn’s F-minor ‘La passione’ wasn’t dwarfed by its Straussian surrounds. Slow movement first, very spacious here, devotional, Sabbath-worthy, followed by a stormy/stressful Allegro, a burdened Minuet/sepulchral Trio, and a fleet, incisively played Finale. A few more repeats would have been welcome, and maybe a harpsichord.
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Footnote: Harding also conducts Don Q with the Bavarian Radio SO, Steven Isserlis (cello), live on BR-Klassik, Jan.30, with Henze (after Schubert) and Haydn (S49 again); and with the Berliner Philharmoniker in March, Ludwig Quandt (cello), live on Digital Concert Hall, 7th, with Wagner and Henze (Barcarola).
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I didn’t know what I was unleashing with the following few words about the NYD concert (if hardly the claimed-for “critique”) both for reader numbers and opinion-splitting comments…