Zarathustra

Two sides of German Romanticism. The tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) by Richard Strauss is a philosophical sound journey. It translates, without words, the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche's superhuman into monumental, colourful music. The eternal struggle between nature, man and higher truth first leads to a passage of overwhelming musical power and then blissfully disappears. Fairy tales, legends and folk songs can be found in the early Romantic poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn) by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim. For Gustav Mahler, these poems were ‘boulders from which each may shape his own’. He set more than two dozen Wunderhorn poems to music, creating small scenes that are often steeped in bitter irony. Listening to a highly intelligent singer and performer like Christian Gerhaher in this role is a pure delight.