RELEASED NOVEMBER 14, 2025
Composers: Richard Strauss, Ian Cusson
Genre: Orchestral music
Conductor: Alexander Shelley
Performers: Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra
Poema 2: Terra Nova is the second volume in the National Arts Centre Orchestra’s four-part recording project devoted to the tone poems of Richard Strauss. A follow-up to Poema 1: Ad Astra, released to critical acclaim, this new album pairs Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra with 1Q84: Sinfonietta Metamoderna, a bold contemporary work by Canadian composer Ian Cusson.
Recorded in Southam Hall and led by Music Director Alexander Shelley, the Poema series invites Canadian composers to create companion works that reflect, refract, or reimagine the expressive possibilities of Strauss’s iconic tone poems. Each volume explores a different facet of narrative orchestral writing, bridging the 19th century and today through new Canadian voices.
Strauss composed Also sprach Zarathustra in 1896, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical novel exploring the idea of “eternal recurrence” and humanity’s search for meaning. Cusson’s companion piece draws inspiration from another literary source: Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, a multi-layered novel that moves between parallel realities and examines metaphysical recurrence through intersecting narrative threads.
The NAC Orchestra premiered 1Q84: Sinfonietta Metamoderna in June 2024. Cusson, a composer of Métis and French-Canadian heritage and the Orchestra’s inaugural Carrefour composer, brings an operatic sense of drama and character to this fully orchestral work.
“Strauss wrote Zarathustra in his early 30s while already in extraordinary command of narrative and colour. Ian, an accomplished opera composer in his early 40s, approaches the tone poem with his own powerful sense of storytelling. It’s fascinating to hear how both composers use only the orchestra—without text or voice—to express narrative ideas.”
— Alexander Shelley, NAC Orchestra Music Director
Cusson approached the commission by reflecting on Strauss’s idea of eternal recurrence, imagining it in contemporary terms as a kind of multiverse—a complex superimposition of realities. That conceptual spark led him to Murakami’s novel, set in 1984, in which two long-separated protagonists navigate alternate worlds before their paths converge again.
“I think there’s something about that that really sparks my curiosity and imagination: the idea that we live in a world that is normal, but then the most magical things can happen.”
— Ian Cusson, composer
Looking ahead, the NAC Orchestra and Alexander Shelley will continue their Strauss series with two additional volumes, each paired with new commissioned works by Canadian composers. Future recordings will focus on Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks and the Suite from Der Rosenkavalier (featuring Alexina Louie’s Mon seul désir: Hommage à Strauss and John Estacio’s Avé), and Ein Heldenleben (joined with Gabriel Dharmoo’s Wanmansho).