1969, my first day at work in the camera department at BBC Film Studios Ealing and feeling a bit lost. It was suggested I go on a sound stage and watch what was going on. It was Ken Russell directing "Strauss". He was shouting at Christopher Gable (Strauss) to beat the opening bars of 'ASZ' correctly. Gable was on the top of a large stepladder, conducting an imaginary orchestra. Within minutes, the 1st assistant director had asked me to leave the set. "Mr Russell doesn't appreciate visitors on his sets".

Yes, the 16th note gives the whole thing a sudden upward movement - 'take off, reaching for the stars,' etc, which was probably what Strauss had in mind with his leap from man to "Superman' theme.

My "go to" recording of Zarathustra is Steinberg/BSO on DGG (1971). His tempi are always on the fast side and he makes the work fly where others seem afraid to let the orchestra go! Now add Vic Firth on timpani, Roger Voisin on 1st trumpet and Joe Silverstein as concertmaster and it's no contest for me. Then the Symphony Hall organ is the bonus of bonuses. To me, this is the ultimate.

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

Me too, but it's not the reference. Sadly.

@NickZwar

4 ай бұрын

The Steinberg is great too. That was my first "own" Zarathustra recording; I bought it as a teen on LP way back.

@LyleFrancisDelp

4 ай бұрын

Are you certain is Voisin on 1st trumpet. I don’t hear his characteristic vibrato. Wondering if it might be Ghitalla, but I’m not sure of the history of the trumpet section.

@lednew2010

4 ай бұрын

You could be right! I was just assuming, which one should never do.

@LyleFrancisDelp

4 ай бұрын

@@lednew2010 True. I do know this…first trumpet in Steinberg’s Planets was absolutely Ghitalla. His attack and sound are unmistakable. I haven’t listened to the ASZ in years. If the trumpets sound similar, then it’s Ghitalla.

Thank you very much Mr. Hurwitz! Great as always! I would like to add that you are very right about the 16th notes at the begining and that a very old performance I have (I bought it almost 50 years ago!) does it like that as well: Karl Böhm's DG/Berlin Philharmonic recording.

I'm going to have nightmares of Hurwitz with the sheet music from Zarathustra permanently pasted over his face.

Would love to hear an orchestra program Also Sprach alongside Alex North's unused score for "2001."

100% agree with your opinion Karajan’s Strauss is amazing. thank you for your this program

Kubrick insisted that the Karajan recording be used in 2001; however Decca relented only under the condition that it NOT receive an onscreen credit for fear it would "cheapen" the reputation of the artist and label by associating them with a sci-fi movie. When Karajan found out later he was furious.

@NickZwar

4 ай бұрын

Talk about a poor marketing decision. Would have been much wiser for Decca to slap a sticker on the recording that said: "The recording used in 2001 - A Space Odyssey". Instead, the put a Karl Böhm recording on the original soundtrack.

Dave, having your face masked by the score while giving a short master class here is most humorous.

I've noticed the 'grace note effect' and the 'longer note effect' for many years, Heard lots of Zarathustras. I did notice the timp triplets when I was in high school. We may as well have recordings of EACH!

i actually used this CD to demo my $4000 Focal Utopia headphone and Sennheiser tube amp five years ago it was that good.

I first heard this piece while watching 2001 and loved it. I bought the Reiner recording and was dismayed how he lengthened that sixteenth note and most performances on KZread do the same thing. However, Von Karajan is correct since Strauss's own recording has the same way of playing that note!

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

Yep!

Thanks for explaining this difference in the way the "da-daaa" or "ba-baaa" is done. Like many and yourself, I learned it from the 2001 and wondered why everyone else did it in the more delayed way. Glad to know I'm not the only one out there who was baffled by this.

@leestamm3187

4 ай бұрын

Dating myself here. Having heard recordings of ASZ well before I first saw 2001 in 1968, I recognized it and thought it was a great use of that fanfare for the scene.

You should make a playlist of all the videos in which you sing. To seek out or to avoid, as the case may be! 😁 Geeze, Zarathustra has eluded me for years. The opening sets me up for something colorful and engaging, but then what follows is, let's say, semi-chromatic sludge. I'm not sure I have it in me to "keep on listening" to it. But what about using that opening as an introduction to Holst's The Planets? Sounds like a Pops Concert winner!

I’m not sure if it’s been released on disc before or just on their Digital Concert Hall, but the Berlin Phil’s recording with Mariss Jansons from 2019 is (in my opinion at least) absolutely glorious and gorgeous. First recording of Zarathustra that kept me engaged past the first few sections

Adding the first page of the work's score to the explanation adds a great deal depth to an overall exceptional explanation (as usual) of the famous 'introduction'. Last evening I as I listened to the Haydn Symph. 46 discussion on the Haydn Crusade Playlist I was following the commentary in the score. The combination audio / visual made the discussion exponentially more enjoyable. Secondarily, how about a discography review of 'viola quintets. There several very good ones ( M Haydn, Mozart, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Nielsen) and a few B grade efforts Vaughn Williams, Bruckner) in the catalog. We will certainly 'Keep on listening'.

I know I'm in a distinct minority, but I find the rest of the piece quite beautiful and moving, if well interpreted and performed. Just crazy, I guess.

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

It has lots of good music, I agree, although the end is a bit of a letdown.

@larrymatheson8414

4 ай бұрын

Hi, I love the whole thing too. And actually, the unanswered question at the end completely satisfies me, musically. That’s once you get used to it of course! But yes, for a first time listener it’s definitely confusing: Huh? Is it over? Do we applaud now? Leaving things unresolved was quite deliberate, though I never read the silly book and can’t say whether Strauss’s ending is appropriate to it or not. A loud C Major finale would have been too obvious. I prefer this lack of satisfying resolution, and I think that’s the whole point of it. You might lob this same criticism at Petrouchka. … but I wouldn’t!

@HassoBenSoba

4 ай бұрын

Agree. And the first section ("The Shadow Dwellers"...or whatever) is my favorite part of the score. And no conductor-- IMO-- (here I go again) does it more beautifully than Maazel in his 1963 Philharmonia/EMI version. Too bad this performance is hardly available; I'm only aware of a release on "Golden Classics" (or something like that), which was a CD transfer from an LP. LR

Idea for a new series: explaining the score. This was really interesting.

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

It's an old series: "How It's Done."

The divisi strings in thus recording are sumptuous, as they were in the 1974 Metamorphosen and his amazing Verklaerte Nacht.

I don’t think of 2001 when I think of this piece surprisingly. I think of WALL-E and as the opening to Elvis’s late concerts like the Hawaii one. It’s use in WALL-E was obviously a reference to 2001

Yep. I've got half a dozen other Zarathustras, and none of them approach this one for excitement and gravity. The next 28 minutes are pretty good, too ;-)

First of all, sorry for asking outside the topic of the video, but this is a question for the "Ask Dave" section, so I don't know any other way to do it. The question is: what do you think about playing or publishing works that the composers did not approve, or even discarded? In your videos you have sometimes commented that you do not think it is right to publish recordings not officially approved by their performers, do you think this should extend to composers? Or, on the contrary, should we limit ourselves to the works to which they gave their approval? I think, for example, of all the works to which, for example, Enescu or Webern did not give an opus number. but also in all unofficial versions of Bruckner's symphonies. Thank you very much for your channel, as always.

score reading with Dave, on the next edition of ... Could be a fun new series for you.

The very opening bars are a timpanist s dream solo.I believe the timpanist for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was Ranier Seeger? He had that trademark moustache

It's rare that I have a "reference" recording that is so clear, but yes, in case of Also Sprach Zarathustra, it is the 1974 DG Karajan recording. Easy pick for me. I enjoy his later digital version as well, or his previous one... but the 1974 version is THE version.

R. Strauss complicates things himself, however, by clearly printing luftpauses BETWEEN the sixteenth-note pick-up(s) and the downbeat(s)!! According to a former colleague and classmate, the fine arts library at our university (in western Canuckistan) had a recording (made perhaps as early as 1924) of the piece conducted by Strauss in which the pause inserted is at least one full beat. (!)The effect is, predictably, totally bizarre and highly unsettling...

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

No, there are no luftpauses in the printed score.

Referring to it as Strauss' 2001 could be a little confusing as there is another Strauss who makes a significant contribution to the soundtrack, i.e., Johann Strauss. I've always found the Blue Danube waltz to be the perfect music to accompany spacecrafts in motion (2001 must be the only science fiction movie I've ever watched where spacecrafts actually obey classical Newtonian laws of physics).

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

No one is confused.

This is one of those works that if you flub the opening, you might as well give up. Call me crazy, but I have always thought the timpani in his earlier recording were ever so slightly out of tune.

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

They were.

Yes, absolutely agree - the first 2 minutes are the best and the rest of the piece struggles to live up to it. A couple of other similar works - I often feel that about Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1. In neither case does the great opening theme recur later.

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

Not true. Strauss' opening theme runs through the whole piece, just never with the same scoring (which makes perfect sense--you only get sunrise once a day).

Are there any reference recordings that you 100% disagree with as a reference?

I'm almost embarrassed to say that an important part of my musical memories are based on pieces chosen by Stanley Kubrick for use in his movies.

I always wondered how those poor brass players didn't run out of breath in the opening. Circulatory breathing perhaps? At any rate, the nice long organ note at the end is great too. Everyone else feels like that they are not holding it long enough. To me at least. A great performance.

The other way to make an accent is to play the following note softer...

Can't argue with this choice (although I really love Reiner's version), but I'm going to have to get my eyesight tested, since it was really difficult to pick out sixteenth-notes on a full page of orchestral score plastered over your face...😉

Best tympani ever, in Sunrise…

@hillcresthiker

4 ай бұрын

Also consider Copelands Fanfare

1974 is a bit late to the party overall. Can we assume that Reiner was the reference prior to that?

@jameslee2943

4 ай бұрын

Yes (no doubt many will disagree...). Reiner's recording was made in March 1954 (5 years before Karajan's Decca version). I believe it was the first stereo recording. It's also in the National Recording Registry.

@LyleFrancisDelp

4 ай бұрын

@@jameslee2943 Though I agree with Dave that the second recording is a bit better. In 1954, at the end of the opening fanfare, the organ sounds quite flat in comparison to the orchestra.

@skisunfb

2 ай бұрын

Clemens Krauss in the early 50s, Strauss himself conducting in 1944, Karl Böhm etc.

Yes! There for sure isn't a better recording, I feel like Karajan, berlin philharmonic, and Strauss (or Beethoven) is just meant to be.

Is it ok to pronounce the "h" in the name "Zarathustra"?

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

It is in English.

@skisunfb

2 ай бұрын

Tsaratústra is the correct pronunciation. U as in oo in English.

The end - in two keys - is incredibly unsatisfying ... After the opening two minutes - for me at least - the whole thing is unsatisfying! Love you videos, but I only watched it to see what you might say, rather than any interest in getting a recording! Best wishes from George

Karajan's performance sounds like no other because the rhythm is incorrect and that ruins the recording for me. Tilson Thomas and the LSO 90s version does it for me.

@Kounios

4 ай бұрын

Karajan's rhythm is correct -- it's how Strauss himself conducted it. See KZread link to Strauss' recording in my comment above. (Bohm used this rhythm, too.)

@DavesClassicalGuide

4 ай бұрын

That is correct.

@Kounios

4 ай бұрын

I wonder if Karajan and Bohm heard Strauss conduct it that way in person. @@DavesClassicalGuide

@The80sBoy

4 ай бұрын

At that steady tempo it's wrong. Or does K put an accelerando in just one bar. That doesn't make sense. We also know that some composers are not the best exponent of their music. Anyhoo, thankfully we all have a choice to make.

@Kounios

4 ай бұрын

I believe that Strauss was considered one of the great conductors (when he wasn't bored). He knew what he was doing. Perhaps there are different editions/versions of the score floating around. @@The80sBoy