Episode details

Radio 3,28 Jun 2020,33 mins

Also sprach Zarathustra

Experience Classical

Available for over a year

With trumpets blazing and thunderous timpani strokes, there are few more explosive and memorable openings to a piece of music than that for 'Also Sprach Zarathustra'. It was famously used in Stanley Kubrick’s '2001: A Space Odyssey', but is actually just the beginning of a much longer work. It can be described as a Tone Poem, where various musical themes are developed and intertwined to create a musical narrative to non-musical source material. It’s scored for an enormous orchestra and takes the listener on an extraordinary journey, by turns exciting, dark, beautiful and thrilling. Composer: Richard Strauss Performers: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor: Juanjo Mena Recording date: 17 July 2012 Date of broadcast: 17 July 2012

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