Hansjörg Schellenberger’s most recent concert with the Orquesta sinfónico de Madrid, in front of an audience of two thousand, was a spectacular success.
He started with a Mozart symphony [K201] played in an ideal interpretation, full of contrasts and with sudden piano effects and elegant crescendi, and went on to perform Richard Strauss’s late oboe concerto with himself as soloist. Then followed the concert’s crowning glory, the symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra.
“This performance too, with its many nuances, … was one of the best I have ever heard,” enthused the critic David Santana Cañas in the online magazine bachtrack.com. “The start of the work, made world-famous by Stanley Kubrick, was like a crescendo to end all crescendi. Every chord, sustained by the lowest-pitched instruments, extended the tonal dimensions, while the orchestra gained volume with every group of chords, enabling the creation of some truly grandiose fortissimi, in which the full complement of brass instruments was dominated by the brilliant and piercing tones of the trumpets.”
