Years-long search brings ‘Don Quixote’ to Northwest BachFest

It all started with a rumor.

While thinking ahead to the 40th anniversary of Northwest BachFest, artistic director and Grammy Award-winning cellist Zuill Bailey heard that, somewhere out there, a Laszlo Varga-arranged version of Richard Strauss’ “Don Quixote” for sextet was waiting to be performed.

The Strauss piece was written for cello, viola and full orchestra, with the cello acting as the well-intentioned but easily angered Quixote and the viola playing the role of his sidekick Sancho Panza.

Because of its grandeur and difficulty, Bailey said, the piece is rarely performed.

But Varga’s arrangement, written for piano, violin, cello, viola, horn and clarinet, was more manageable.

Bailey knew that the world-renowned Varga, who served as principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic for 11 years, was also a celebrated arranger, but he had never heard of Varga’s take on “Don Quixote.”

“I’d never heard of this before, never seen the music, never seen a performance of it,” he said. “I thought ‘Well, where would they have it?’ ”

Bailey, who is celebrating his fifth year as the festival’s artistic director, did some digging and eventually learned that before Varga died in 2014, he donated his entire music library to the University of North Carolina-Greensboro’s Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives.

Bailey happened to be performing at the school about a year and a half ago and, in his words, fate played its card when he was approached by the curators of the archives after the concert.

“I said ‘Is it true that you have Laszlo Varga’s collection and is it true that this piece might exist?’ ” he said. “They came up to me the next day and handed me the parts. They said ‘It’s really never been played before. It was unveiled here at the university, but we would love for you to showcase this in the world.’ ”

After receiving Varga’s arrangement, Bailey called BachFest executive director Gertrude Harvey and proposed showcasing the work and its “unusual configuration of instruments” at the next festival.

Bailey, Mateusz Wolski (violin), Nick Carper (viola), Daniel Cotter (bass clarinet), Emily Browne (horn) and Matt Herskowitz (piano), who is returning to BachFest after popular performances in 2016, will perform the West Coast premiere of “Don Quixote” on Monday at Barrister Winery.

The sextet will also perform “Don Quixote” on Wednesday at Hamilton Studio and Thursday at Hagadone Event Center in Coeur d’Alene.

Varga’s heroic writing for the cello, Bailey said, helps tell the story of Don Quixote, as does the sound effects the musicians make throughout the performance, like bleating sheep and Quixote’s fight with a windmill.

The sextet’s performances will also feature projections that guide listeners through the story.

“It’s like film music, in a way,” Bailey said. “It tells its own story without having to have the visuals, but in this case, we’ll have them.”

Each performance of “Don Quixote” will close with a performance of Ernö Dohnányi Sextet in C Major, Op. 37.

Bailey called this piece unusual because of its musical configuration, which is exactly like that of Varga’s “Don Quixote” adaptation.

These unusual configurations are just part of how Bailey is celebrating the festival’s 40th anniversary.

In the first week of the festival, which opened on Feb. 27, Bailey and guest musicians the Ying String Quartet performed Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata and Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto, both of which have been arranged for cello and string quartet.

“I was just trying to come up with other ways to reimagine the pieces we know in ways that would be really appropriate and fun,” he said. “In these two weeks, we’re doing so many interesting things that are very celebrated works but looking at them in different ways.”