Hi, kids! Today we are going to talk about high and low sounds using the music Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard (pronounced REE-card) Strauss! THE CHALLENGE: We are going to use our bodies and objects around the house to demonstrate high and low-pitched sounds. We can pretend our bodies are rockets going up to space … Continued
What Shakespeare was to the sonnet, Richard Strauss was the tone poem. Pioneered by Franz Liszt in the mid-1800s, tone poems took the then-groundbreaking step of tying music to an extra-musical source—usually, a poem, novel, painting, or landscape—allowing music to “tell the story.” In the tone poem Strauss found a perfect outlet for his compositional … Continued
This Thanksgiving weekend, Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada leads an all-Strauss program that showcases the virtuoso abilities of our fabulous musicians. Joining Andrés and the orchestra is world-renowned Swedish soprano Miah Persson, who sings Strauss’s Four Last Songs, the composer’s gorgeous final masterpiece. Get to know this golden-voiced artist as she discusses Strauss, new music, Texas, … Continued
This November, the Houston Symphony is mixing things up with The Seven Deadly Sins, a playfully provocative program put together by acclaimed guest conductor Bramwell Tovey. “Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with Storm Large was our starting point,” Tovey explained. “Kurt Weill was a German-Jewish refugee who escaped the Nazis and eventually became a U.S. citizen. … Continued
According to his novelist friend Romain Rolland, Richard Strauss once quipped that “In music one can say everything. People won’t understand you.” Strauss’ characteristically humorous remark seems particularly applicable to Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), one of his best known yet most misunderstood works. Ever since Stanley Kubrick used it to score a cosmic … Continued
Way back in August our Principal Cello, Brinton Smith, sent me a link to the Cervantes Collection at Texas A&M University Libraries, which houses one of the largest collections of Don Quixote iconography in the world. Brinton thought the Cervantes Collection would be a good starting point for the Sound Plus Vision element of this … Continued
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