SD Symphony: Also Sprach Zarathustra & Bluebeard's Castle
Rafael Payare, conductor
Karen Cargill, mezzo-soprano
Christopher Purves, baritone
San Diego Symphony Orchestra
R. STRAUSS: Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30
BARTÓK: Bluebeard’s Castle
Our season ends with two of the most spectacular and orchestrally overwhelming scores from the late romantic period: Richard Strauss’s epic tone-poem Also sprach Zarathustra, inspired by Nietzsche’s account of the deep meditations of the half- mythical Persian hermit-philosopher Zoroaster; and Bartók’s dramatic fantasy Bluebeard’s Castle, based on the ancient fairy-tale about a young woman who marries a mysterious aristocrat and discovers that he has terrible secrets kept behind locked doors.
Both these magnificent works use extreme and glittering orchestral colors to represent the real colors of the world and the cosmos – dawn, sunlight, vast mountain views, sunset and the darkest night. And both are perfectly suited to our fabulous new acoustic in the Jacobs Music Center, and the beauty of the inside of our hall.
