Regis RRC1371 Few cellists identify more fully with the fragile mentality of Cervantes’s knight than Paul Tortelier. He had played Don Quixote under Strauss, and recorded it three times. This recording is his second and finest. Although he’s fully engaged with the score’s bravura moments, it’s the more introspective passages which benefit most from Tortelier’s portrayal. And so, the Epilogue is no tragic death scene but a dignified ‘bowing out’. Fully restored to sanity, our aged hero’s dying soliloquy is played simply and tenderly, with no hint of bathos. Elsewhere, Tortelier is quite capable of letting his hair down, whether tilting at windmills, ‘rescuing’ maidens in distress or harassing harmless monks. He’s also a great team player – the cello/viola dialogues with the excellent Sancho Panza of Giusto Cappone are a joy. Holding the reins is that most urbane of great conductors, Rudolf Kempe who, as one-time principal oboist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, had also played Strauss under Strauss. Admirably light-of-foot, Kempe brings out the humanity and wit of Strauss’s score more fully than most. In this classic 1958 recording, the balance is natural, and the warm, spacious sound quality a superb example of early stereo.