MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Strauss, (R.): Also sprach Zarathustra (with Mahler's Totenfeier)

Pierre Boulez presents his contribution to Richard Strauss Year 1999, Also sprach Zarathustra. Of a recent Zarathustra performance, the Chicago Tribune reviewer commented: "Boulez shaped everything exactly, drawing together each episode with sonorous sweep and a natural ebb and flow of tension". In this unique coupling, Zarathustra is presented together with Mahler's Totenfeier, the early version of the first movement from his Symphony No. 2. The two works share compositional elements, and it was even Richard Strauss who organized the first public hearing of Totenfeier in 1895.