Also sprach
Zarathustra

World’s most famous intro  

Richard Strauss’ masterpiece Also sprach Zarathustra is best known for its triumph of the sun, with trumpet fanfare and a cosmic soundscape radiating in C major.  

At sunrise, the prophet Zarathustra descends to earth to declare the Nietzschean notion that God is dead – and that a superior human, the Übermensch, should take the place of religion. Strauss’ tone poem from 1896 is based on Nietzsche’s work Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the symphonic interpretation is largely shaped by the contrasts between nature and humans, between C major and B minor.   

The young and highly promising conductor Daniel Reith gets the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra to ask the most pressing existential questions, when Strauss’ most famous orchestral work is performed on the Main Stage.

Antithesis of comedy  

The evening’s performance also includes Johannes Brahms’ Tragic Overture.   

For once, Brahms’ tragic work is not inspired by a self-experienced, tragic background story. Some claim that the work was written as an overture to a new production of Goethe’s Faust – but which never materialised. It is more likely that the work was written parallel to his festive Academic Festival Overture, almost its emotional antithesis.   

Bells from Estonia  
  

Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, Latin for brothers, had its world premiere in Stockholm in 1983. It was written at a time when the Estonian Pärt was developing his own style called tintinnabuli, Latin for small bells, by which he uses simple triads to simulate bells. Fratres is the first work written with this technique and is full of contemplation combined with intricate, mathematical patterns.