For those not in the know, Terra Nova, the second opus in the Poema series, explores themes of the search for meaning and the human experience. Alexander Shelley offers an interpretation of Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra that highlights the fragile balance between light and darkness, knowledge and mystery, inspired by Nietzsche’s eponymous book.

Canadian composer Ian Cusson’s work, 1Q84: Sinfonietta Metamoderna, resonates with Strauss’ work by drawing parallels between the world views of the German author and Japanese author Haruki Murakami, writer of the novel 1Q84. The National Arts Centre Orchestra delivers a performance that transcends music to reflect on our humanity.

1. 1Q84: Sinfonietta Metamoderna [09:43]
2. Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), Op. 30 [33:57]

This astoundingly accomplished work of musical art opens on the emboldened 1Q84: Sinfonietta Metamoderna, and continues to bring forth a work dutifully veined with animation and such a driven narrative, that it is hard to believe that it lasts a mere ten minutes.

Playful, at times even flirtatious, and yet always knowing of its layers and textures, it lives and breathes through its devotion to woodwinds and brass sections, the orchestra fully utilized throughout.

Strauss’s Nietzsche-inspired Also sprach Zarathustra (1896) is the core of this new recording for me though, as for within its entirety of nearly 34 minutes its musically probing examination of human experience is such an affective one that you lose yourself within its embroidered finery very early on.

Opening on the familiar-to-millions (especially those of a cinematic bent) work that embodies Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), this veritably heralding piece is handled masterfully here by Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra.

Once past that rather iconic theme and we are gifted a series of dramatic peaks and valleys, along with layered arcs, all contextualized in a way so as to never try and cover the same musical territory again within the recording. Masterful. Simply masterful.