O.C. MUSIC : On a Quest for the Real ‘Quixote’

From the number of Don Quixotes popping up on local stages, you’d think Orange County was in the middle of an “Impossible Dream” epidemic.

The Broadway musical “Man of La Mancha” straddled the old year and the new at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. American Ballet Theatre will dance a new full-length version of “Don Quixote” at the Center Feb. 2 through 7.

And on Saturday, David Zinman will lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Center in Richard Strauss’ musical portrait of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, in a program sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society.

Cellist Lynn Harrell, who will play the prominent part Strauss designated in this 1897 tone poem to represent the hapless Don, has several ideas about the figure’s universal appeal, even though, as Harrell puts it, “so many things he does are so stupid.”

“The reason Don Quixote has been such an inspiration for so many centuries,” Harrell, 47, said in a recent phone interview from his home in Beverly Hills, “is that he represents that aspect of basic good humanity gone wrong and (engenders) one’s sympathy for that.”

As for the Don’s craziness, “Cervantes had censors to deal with,” Harrell continued. “He was making fun of the nobility and some of the so-called leaders of the time, which was such a no-no.

“The only way he could do that was if he had a character do stupid things and be crazy. But in a way, by being inspired by upstanding, legitimate social values, Don Quixote is thereby legitimized.”

In addition to his literary insights, Harrell can claim a link back to the composer, “having worked on the piece with people who worked with Strauss himself--Gregor Piatigorsky and George Szell.”

“I played it for Piatigorsky in Dallas when I was 14 or 15, when he was there playing a concerto with the orchestra,” he said. Subsequently, he took master classes with the renowned cellist.

Harrell also served as principal cellist with the Cleveland Orchestra from 1965 to 1971, and was preparing the piece for a concert when Cleveland music director Szell died in 1970. “Of course, he had studied with Strauss himself,” Harrell said.

What he learned from both men was how to interpret “the little details” of “what the music means at any single moment.”

“You have to try to bring that out not only by the normal musical criteria, but by the sense of the human and the dramatic,” he said. “You not only have to play loud and soft, fast and slow, but you have to give a sense of the theater of the piece, the personality of Don Quixote, the aspect of Spain centuries before the piece was written. . . .

“Don Quixote is crazy, so the sound of the cello, that slightly off quality, should be present until the final section when he is at home after his adventures and he is old and ill and does return to sanity of mind.

“To do that--as was suggested by both Piatigorsky and Szell--I use an uneven vibrato and sometimes a shaking bow and altogether a much more exaggerated interpretation.”

Harrell feels that for this piece, knowing the composer’s own synopsis is “essential for its true appreciation, perhaps more than any other of the Strauss tone poems.”

But for him as an interpretive artist, familiarity with the Cervantes original is “absolutely essential.”

In his reading of the novel, Harrell has “used asterisks and underlined sentences, paragraphs and chapters that were particularly apt for Strauss’ choice for all the adventures that Don Quixote takes,” he said.

“For instance, in the ‘Night Vigil,’ where Don Quixote is going to stay up all night and Sancho Panza falls asleep under the stars, there’s a piccolo that represents a shooting star in the midst of this rich, luxurious orchestral texture.

“That is mentioned in the book. It’s not a star in Strauss’ imagination of what a summer night would be like in the middle of the plains of Spain. It’s taken from Cervantes. . . .

“So if Strauss had so much feeling of homage to such a creative genius as Cervantes, I felt I should have as much respect to Strauss and Cervantes as a player,” he said.

While not a cello concerto, the work includes solo sections that are “notoriously difficult and demanding,” Harrell said. “Because they are short utterances, there is a premium on really playing them accurately.

“If you are playing for four minutes and you miss a note or two, that’s one thing. But when you’re playing for three seconds and you miss a note, that’s different.”

Over the years, his interpretation of Strauss’ music has become more subtle. “I’ve found more and more ways to be inwardly silly, goofy and crazy without exaggerating so much,” he said.

“Because you’re playing a cello, people expect certain things. To make an ugly sound on the cello is generally thought of as a mistake, a miscalculation, like a scratch or an out-of-tune note. . . .

“So there’s been a slow transition--metamorphosis--in my learning how to do those things, but within the bounds of what is more acceptable.”

* Cellist Lynn Harrell will be the soloist in Strauss’ “Don Quixote” played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of David Zinman on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Zinman also will conduct the Prelude to Act III of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” and Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 1. Rouse will be at the preconcert lecture by L.A. Philharmonic composer-in-residence Steven Stucky at 7 p.m. The program is sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society. Tickets: $15 to $42. Information: (714) 646-6277.