Also Sprach Zarathustra

Opening with its famous ‘Sunrise’ fanfare, there is no mistaking Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra. A bold, intrepid tone poem, famously used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it explores mankind’s place in the universe, diving headfirst into themes of religion, science and individuality.

It was as an obedient pupil of his father, the celebrated horn player Franz Strauss, that Richard Strauss began his musical career – entirely in the spirit of the classics and early Romantics, with proven forms and traditional genres. Strauss senior loathed Richard Wagner’s monstrous music dramas as well as the achievements of the “New German School” around Franz Liszt, with its avant-garde tone poems and extra-musical programmes. As Richard grew up, he shared his father’s views unquestioningly – but then found a mentor in Hans von Bülow, who, of all people, had once worked together very closely with Wagner. In 1885, Bülow engaged the 21-year-old Strauss as conductor of the Meiningen Court Orchestra. Its concert master, the radical Wagnerian Alexander Ritter, took the young man under his wing and acquainted him with the blessings of “progressive music” – with the result that Richard Strauss soon began composing symphonic poems himself.

A truly breathtaking new recording from, quite simply, the most exciting and gifted young conductor of our times.

Vladimir Jurowski has been the Chief conductor and Artistic Director of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin since 2017. He has since extended his contract until 2027. At the same time, he has been General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich since 2021.

For its very first album on Chandos, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain devotes its characteristic energy and musical mastery to an explosive programme that transcends daily life and earthly experience. It is helped by the enthusiastic, encouraging, and experienced baton of Edward Gardner as well as by the sumptuous yet detailed acoustic of Symphony Hall, Birmingham, all fully revealed in this surround-sound recording.

Vladimir Jurowski and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin excel in these new recordings of Richard Strauss’s electrifying Also Sprach Zarathustra and Mahler’s Totenfeier, to coincide with the Russian maestro taking up office as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the orchestra.

Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus spoke Zarathustra), a tone poem after Friedrich Nietzsche, was written in 1896, during the period Strauss spent as conductor at the opera in his native city of Munich. It is based on the rhapsodic expression of Nietzsche's highly personal philosophy; Strauss makes use of an unusually large orchestra, deployed in the most varied way. In this recording, the orchestra shows a high degree of brilliance.

"… the sound is sumptuous, wide-ranging and Karajan's control of the work masterly … this is arguably the library choice …"

For many years, the concerto recordings made by Herman Krebbers were staples of the Philips LP catalogue.