Sir Antonio Pappano: Kendall, Liszt and Strauss

Sir Antonio Pappano joins forces with soloist Yeol Eum Son for a concert on tour in Alicante.

Pop culture’s most famous fanfare sets the mood – this is music that tells you: wake up! A blast of trumpets, a pounding of timpani: the opening of Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra heralds the rise of the sun. Stanley Kubrick used it to grab viewers’ attention in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But for Strauss, this is the dawn of an age full of questions: what does it mean to be alive? Joining the debate, Liszt’s Totentanz is a ferocious vision of mortality, complete with ghoulish jangling bones. And there’s a new work by Hannah Kendall, a composer whose music, in Pappano’s own words, ‘has an amazing ability to really grip the listener’.