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".

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 KZfaq do the same thing. However, Von Karajan is correct since Strauss's own recording has the same way of playing that note!

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

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!

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!

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.

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.

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’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

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

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

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 ;-)

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

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.

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

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).

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...

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.

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

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

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...

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.

Best tympani ever, in Sunrise…

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...😉

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.

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

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

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

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

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.