NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Leif Ove Andsnes / Mikko Franck
Lindberg / Grieg / Strauss
Strauss as übermensch
The »King« Elvis Presley came on stage to it and Stanley Kubrick used it on the soundtrack to his »2001: A Space Odyssey«: the opening fanfare of Richard Strauss’s »Also sprach Zarathustra«, with its unforgettable switch from C major to C minor, is one of the most popular passages of music of all time, both in the classical music world and beyond. However, the theme explored in the symphonic poem is not something you’d usually expect the mainstream to embrace: Friedrich Nietzsche’s complex work of philosophical fiction »Thus Spoke Zarathustra« describes the revolt of a chosen »übermensch« against all things official and ordinary. Yet nowhere has such a critique of civilisation ever sounded as delightful and magnificent as it does in Richard Strauss’s hands!
Just a few months after his debut, the Finnish conductor Mikko Franck re-joins the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, and juxtaposes Strauss’s classic with two works from his Scandinavian homeland. »Serenades« by fellow Finn Magnus Lindberg was premiered in Chicago in December 2021 and is often reminiscent of the tonal language of the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.
Performers
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester
Leif Ove Andsnes piano
conductor Mikko Franck
Programme
Magnus Lindberg
Serenades
Edvard Grieg
Konzert für Klavier und Orchester a-Moll op. 16
Zugabe:
Antonín Dvořák
Frühlingslied aus Poetische Stimmungsbilder op. 85
– Interval –
Richard Strauss
Also sprach Zarathustra / tone poem inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche, Op. 30