• In conversation: Esther Schweins
• Beethoven Orchestra Bonn
• Dirk Kaftan, conductor

Richard Strauss 1864-1949
Also sprach Zarathustra - tone poem for large orchestra op. 30

The tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss also at Freitagskonzert 5.

At this concert school classes and music schools of the middle and upper school get tickets for  € 5 / pupil (limited offer)

Even Friedrich Nietzsche was not sure how his great hymn Also sprach Zarathustra should or would be classified. He thought perhaps it would be best to call the work a symphony. Richard Strauss took this suggestion literally and wrote a massive symphonic poem in four sections that defies all attempts at classification. When, in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001 – A Space Odyssey, a monkey strikes a bovine skeleton with a bone to the sounds of the opening fanfare of Strauss’s Zarathustra, this is, on the one hand, self-empowerment: More can be achieved with tools than with the bare hand! On the other hand, however, one cannot get rid of the feeling that there is also rebellion and revolution going on. Bare violence that is directed against the existing, against the order that has prevailed up to now. So the talk about Zarathustra is about the questions of revolution and rebellion, of integration into existing systems and their critique: living meaningfully, despite and with the world and other people. How do we live freely, what are we guided by, what do we have to fight against? The actress and presenter Esther Schweins radically changed her lifestyle after a drastic experience – what is her position on the questions Nietzsche asked himself in his major philosophical work?