What a party! The NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and top conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen really let rip at their New Year’s Eve concert in 2024 – with two absolute orchestral hits, and a very special insider tip with an extra touch of rock and glamour.
The evening opens with Richard Strauss’s powerful tone poem »Also sprach Zarathustra«, a great orchestral work that is world-famous not least from the soundtrack of the classic sci-fi film »2001: A Space Odyssey«. The musicians then perform the Violin Concerto by all-round musician Bryce Dessner (guitarist in the rock band The National) together with the successful violinist Pekka Kuusisto. And the party really takes off with Maurice Ravel’s effervescent »Boléro« – these are nothing if not catchy tunes!
Peformers
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester
Pekka Kuusisto violin
conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen
Programme
Richard Strauss
Also sprach Zarathustra / tone poem inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche, Op. 30
– Interval –
Bryce Dessner
Violin Concerto
Maurice Ravel
Boléro
About the programme
The opening of Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem »Also sprach Zarathustra« became world-famous from its use in Stanley Kubrick's classic sci-fi film »2001: A Space Odyssee«: a trumpet fanfare rises bright as a ray of sun over the dark rumble of double basses. Strauss added the following quote from Nietzsche's eponymous poem to the score: »We have beeen wanderers in the night, now we want to wander by daylight«, and it's true that the music radiates light and warmth in the composer's typically graphic, elemental style.
In Maurice Ravel's »Boléro« too, the first notes suffice for the listener to recognise one of the catchiest tunes in all of music history. Ravel has the melody roam through the orchestra for some 15 minutes, in unvarying rhythm and gradual crescendo – accompanied throughout by the snare drum, for which the work comes close to an athletic challenge.
Bryce Dessner is not only the composer of the violin concerto, he is also the guitarist of successful American indie rock band The National. In his work, which he wrote for Pekka Kuuisto, he explores the pilgrims’ path Camino de Santiago, which runs right past Dessner’s house in the French Basque country.
»Good music calls for honesty, creativity and originality. Classical music is an adventure for me. I switch back and forth between the worlds of classical and rock, but I’m always the same musician.«
Bryce Dessner
