First on this recent Channel Classics release the rare and hugely enjoyable four-movement suite from Jacques Ibert’s ‘choreodrama’ with chorus and speakers Le chevalier errant, based on the Don Quixote theme and written for Ida Rubinstein, music that at 2'06" into the opening ‘Les moulins’ (‘The Windmills’) suddenly swings into syncopated mode. The expansive and bewitching third movement, ‘L’âge d’or’ (‘The Golden Age’), finds the knight represented by a saxophone before a strummed solo guitar suggests the world of flamenco. Folk dancing keeps things buoyant until tragedy strikes, and the Don receives a fatal, physical blow.

To call Ibert’s score ‘colourful’ is an understatement, and this recording by the Orchestre National de Lyon under their music director Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider is considerably more vivid than a rival version conducted by Jacques Mercier. It reminds me of Szeps-Znaider’s wonderful two-disc set ‘Aux étoiles’ (Bru Zane, 1/24), a collection of French symphonic poems – works by Franck, Guiraud, Bruneau, Boulanger, d’Indy, Dukas, Saint-Saëns, Duparc, Holmès, Bonis, Chausson, Sohy, Chabrier, Rabaud and Joncières, many of them rare and favourably reviewed by Mark Pullinger with the words ‘you just know that [Szeps-Znaider and his orchestra] are going to unearth things you’ve never heard of before, most of which will turn out to be worth a listen … Lovers of French orchestral music will need little urging to investigate Bru Zane’s excellent release tout de suite.’

As to Strauss’s masterpiece, Szeps-Znaider shows equal flair and, being a first-rate string player himself, employs the skills of soloists who are fully up to the job of portraying Quixote (cellist Jian Wang) and Sancho Panza (viola player Amihai Grosz). Between them, soloists, conductor and orchestra carry us with them, whether battling sheep (which too often sounds like a traffic jam), facing an imaginary army, envisioning the delusional Quixote’s beloved Dulcinea or witnessing his gentle death (which Wang and Szeps-Znaider handle with the utmost tenderness).

Personal favourite stereo recordings of this supremely accomplished work have included Kurt Reher (cello) and Jan Hlinka (viola) with Zubin Mehta conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Decca, 4/74), Tibor de Machula (cello) and Klaas Boon (viola) with Bernard Haitink conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra (Philips/Decca, 2/79) and François-Xavier Roth with cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and viola player Tabea Zimmermann (Harmonia Mundi, A/21), about which Hugo Shirley wrote: ‘Roth [with the Gürzenich Orchestra, Cologne] keeps things lucid and flowing … while bringing plenty of incisiveness, humour and imagination to Strauss’s wonderful score.’ All true, but Szeps-Znaider and his collaborators would have us believe that Don Quixote is Richard Strauss’s orchestral masterpiece.