Strauss: Thus spake Zarathustra

– season opening that sets off sparks

Conductor: Adam Hickox
Soloist, cello: Truls Mørk

Program
Johan Svendsen: Party polonaise
Antonín Dvořák: Cello Concerto
Richard Strauss: Thus spake Zarathustra

About the concert
So, could this season opening be any more iconic? Chief conductor Adam Hickox is banging on the bass drum and has invited Truls Mørk himself to our opening concert with Strauss' legendary tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra paired with Dvořák's beautiful cello concerto.

Strauss is said to have been so inspired by the beautiful poetic language of Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra that he set eight of the chapter titles to music, the first of which, Sunrise, is probably the most well-known, both from film and advertising, but primarily from Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The tone poem conveys the stages of human development in Strauss's unmistakable tonal language and colorful orchestral palette.

The virtuoso cello concerto, which Dvořák wrote during a winter sojourn in New York, has become a solid cornerstone of the classical cello repertoire and is one of the two most played cello concertos on concert stages around the world (the other being Elgar's). And when Truls Mørk, our international star cellist, interprets this heartfelt and melancholic work, we predict that the hearts of the audience will be deeply moved and touched.

The concert opens, fittingly enough, with Johan Svendsen's Fest-polonaise, one of his most famous orchestral works, written for the coronation of King Oscar II.

(Pssst… these two also round out the season in a season finale that sparkles with sensitivity and beauty.)