Urbanski Ndr Elbphilharmonie Orchestra - Also Sprach Zarathustra - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The Oslo Philharmonic and Vasily Petrenko present the first of a new series of recordings of Richard Strauss' orchestral music. This first features the great tone poems InchAlso Sprach ZarathustraInch and InchEin Heldenleben,Inch both works the Oslo Philharmonic has a long history of performing at home and abroad. Vasily Petrenko, chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic since 2013, exploits the special intensity of the orchestra's string sound and it's magnificent wind and brass sections to full effect in this thrillingly virtuosic music. Vasily Petrenko is one of the most significant and galvanizing musicians alive, and has won numerous accolades for his recordings of Russian repertoire, including two Gramophone awards. With the Oslo Philharmonic, he has recorded works by Shostakovich, Szymanowski, Strauss and Prokofiev, as well as a major cycle of orchestral works by Alexander Scriabin. The Oslo Philharmonic was born in 1919 and over the next half-century, the orchestra's reputation grew steadily. In 1979, it changed forever with the arrival of a young Latvian arriving in Norway, Mariss Jansons, who transformed it to rival the great Philharmonics of Vienna, Berlin and New York.

Sebastian Weigle and the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra began their series of performances of Richard Strauss' tone poems in 2013 with Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) - they now end the series sumptuously and philosophically with volume No. 6 and the works Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) and Don Quixote. Born in Berlin, Sebastian Weigle studied French Horn, Piano and Conducting at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music. In 1982 he was appointed as Principal Solo-Hornist of the Staatskapelle Berlin. From 1997 to 2002 he acquired a broad repertoire as Staatskapellmeister at the Berlin Staatsoper. From 2004 to 2009 he worked as General Music Director at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and acceded from the season 2008/09 the same position at Oper Frankfurt. There he made his debut in 2002/03 with Strauss' Salome, followed by the premiere of Die Frau ohne Schatten. For the extraordinary success of this production, he was voted Conductor of the Year in 2003 by the critics of the Opernwelt magazine. This award was already given to him three times in Barcelona in 2005 for his conducting of Parsifal, in 2006 for Die Tote Stadt by Korngold and in 2010 for his conducting of Tristan and Isolde. In 2019 Sebastian Weigle will become principal conductor of Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo/Japan.

Thomas Dausgaard and the Seattle Symphony thought-provoking live performances of two extraordinary orchestral works composed near the turn of the 20th century Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra and Alexander Scriabin's The Poem of Ecstasy. Recorded in the stunning acoustics of Benaroya Hall, these bold, colorful scores celebrate the search for creative meaning and the triumph of the human spirit. With naturalistic imaging, depth of field and dynamic range, all Seattle Symphony Media recordings have been engineered to audiophile standards and aim to capture as realistically as possible the sound of the orchestra performing on the Benaroya Hall stage.