This wonderful concert was the first of a pair given by Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to raise funds for the MS Society in tribute to Barenboim’s first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, who died 30 years ago this month. The evening began with extracts from Christopher Nupen’s film Jacqueline du Pré: A Gift Beyond Words, a celebration of her talent and instinctive musicianship, recently shown on BBC Four. The programme opened, meanwhile, with Strauss’s Don Quixote – not the first work, perhaps, that comes to mind when du Pré is mentioned, though her recording (with Adrian Boult conducting) ranks among the greatest.
Strauss’s tone poem, with its cello and viola solos representing Quixote and Sancho Panza respectively, is a bittersweet negotiation of the boundaries between illusion and reality, its point being that the Don’s chivalric fantasies have an integrity that transcends the mundane world around him. Barenboim’s interpretation, gloriously played by the orchestra of Israeli and Arab musicians he founded and has nurtured, was beautiful in its sad wit, emotional veracity and attention to detail.
Dulcinea’s oboe solo, delicate and idealistic, hovered in the air at the start, before a jumble of themes, wedged against each other in delirious but clear counterpoint, suggested the clouding of Quixote’s mind. Windmills, sheep and unctuous clerics – his imagined enemies – were all realised with bitter humour and great virtuosity. But it was the big flights of fancy, as the Don dreams of love and holds his knightly vigils, that took one’s breath away with their passionate sincerity. Kian Soltani was the sublime cello soloist, effortlessly lyrical and profoundly touching in the closing moments, when Quixote bids farewell to his ideals and prepares for death. Miriam Manasherov, playing among the orchestral violas, dexterously outlined Sancho Panza’s naive loquacity. The whole thing was outstanding – the best performance of the work I’ve heard live.
Soltani joined the orchestral cellos after the interval for Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, done on the most majestic of scales, and a high-voltage interpretation that captured the work’s progression from darkness to light with remarkable vividness. Baleful clarinets at the start gave way to a real sense of turbulence as the first movement gathered momentum. The Andante’s horn melody had wonderful poise, while the finale was exceptional in its elation and elan.
• Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 30 October. Then on BBC iPlayer for 30 days.
