Word: sprach
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...more traditional fare, which he leads with crisp economic gestures. A propulsive but disciplined reading of Schumann's underrated Symphony No. 2 was one of the highlights of the orchestra's tour, and Dohnányi's authoritative interpretation of Strauss's tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra restored all the familiar work's thrilling majesty...
STRAUSS: Also Sprach Zarathustra; Macbeth (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Lorin Maazel, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon). Who could have predicted that a tone poem based on Friedrich Nietzsche's notions of the death of God, the will to power and the rise of a superman would become one of symphonic literature's greatest hits? Yet long before Director Stanley Kubrick popularized its spectacular organ and brass apostrophe in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Strauss's blazing essay in orchestrational virtuosity ranked high in audiences' esteem. Maazel and the Viennese give this mettle tester a commanding reading, capturing the grandeur...
More warily than their pop music colleagues, serious composers have taken notice. An instrument that can reduce the forces needed to perform Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra from a 100-piece symphony orchestra to a couple of keyboards, electrical outlets and multitrack stereo tape is obviously something to be reckoned with, even if its characteristically metallic tones and dispassionate air will never replace the luster or emotion of a Berlin Philharmonic. But experimenters such as Anderson, Glass, Pierre Boulez and Morton Subotnick are seeking to conjure new sounds in such works as Subotnick's Silver Apples...
...white pajamas, their costumes slit wide to flash inner forearms and thighs. Slowly they start to spin, hop and shuffle in smooth synchronicity. Out of huge loudspeakers suspended from the ceiling comes the foghorn blast of a low note-like the opening of Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra-played by a synthesizer; later the music rises in a blast of brass to a Brucknerian apotheosis...
...Philadelphia Orchestra (during its Beethoven festival); at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony's Berkshire retreat (during an all-Beethoven orchestral weekend); and at the Hollywood Bowl (during the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Beethoven festival). Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Los Angeles are each playing Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra and Stravinsky's The Firebird this summer. Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto? The Cleveland Orchestra is serving it up, and so are the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The beat goes...