Dear Richard Strauss...

"Dear Doktor Strauss, I`m always hanging midair after a performance of Don Quixote. I know this reveals my literary brutality but I have to confess that I find the Cervantes book quite boring. I´ve never understood why he needed so many words when his contemporary colleague Shakespeare was able to characterise the complexity of soul in such a precise and economical manner. As a matter of fact You made Cervantes a favor: it´s much easier for the people of our time to get emotional by 176 pages (and 35 minutes) of musical score than 477 pages of words (anything between two weeks and two years). In the modern world we are unwillingly used to the fact that everything around us consists of short episodes. It´s amazing that You created a piece for the Disney generations as early as 1897!"

The power of Strauss´s Don derives from the composers deep understanding of the human being. This feature is present in many of his works: think about Marschallin, Till Eulenspiegel, Salome or Elektra. Strauss feels sympathy even for his most surreal and ridiculous characters. I´m sure Cervantes did too but Strauss makes this antihero more approachable for us who are used to the fact that all the important theatrical scenes are made emotionally more understandable by music. The final scene of E.T. without music by John Williams would be only comical.

Strauss is able to show perfectly the contradiction between "Sein und Schein" and "Wollen und Können" . The personal message by him is that everybody has a right to keep his or her own dreams. This hasn´t got anything to do with the actual "dream come true", in many cases that is impossible and even dangerous. But dreams are most personal things and taking them away from someone might have deathly consequences.

The cellist Li Wei is one of those extraordinary artists who can always create something unexpected in the concert. This is of course how it should be. In the rehearsals we build a frame and in the concert we fill that frame with life. This reminds me on something I read during the holidays. Before Christmas I found a collection of short stories, "The Midnight Love feast" (La médianoche amoureux) by Michel Tournier, a writer whom I deeply love and respect. On the last pages of this book there is a story called "A Tale about Fine Arts" in which The Caliph of Bagdad wants to get the walls of his great new reception hall painted by the best and most famous artists of the known world. There are two equal walls opposite each other and after a careful selection he declares a competition between a Chinese and a Greek artist. The walls are covered by curtains and no one is allowed to enter the room before the competitors have finished.

Before closing the doors the Caliph asks the painters how long it will take to paint the walls. "I need three months" says Chinese. "I´m ready when my Chinese colleague is ready", says the Greek artist. After three months the Caliph invites the court to assemble the hall and the curtains are removed. The painting on the Chinese´s wall is unveiled first and people are struck by the beauty of the work: he has painted a most beautiful exotic garden one can imagine. Then the curtain covering the Greek´s wall is removed and the guests are even more stunned: he has put a huge mirror on the wall. The mirror reflects the masterful painting on the opposite wall but at the same time shows the people looking at the mirror. He has made the competitor´s painting perfect and thus wins the competition.

While Tournier´s point is that in the arts world distribution is as important for the artist as the work itself, the musicians should learn that a graphic realisation of the score is not enough. It has to be filled with life. in our case the Chinese cellist became a Greek painter...