Tobias Berndt reviews

I can sympathise with Vladimir Jurowski’s evident desire to combat hyperinflation in the opening of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Sometimes this spectacular musical daybreak is worked up so much that it utterly eclipses the rest of the work. The sensitive, finely shaped, searching performance that follows on makes a good case for playing things down at the start. The trouble is, the opening now sounds perfunctory – as though Jurowski just can’t wait to get to the ‘real’ business.