The 7th Symphony concert focuses on the big (unanswered) questions such as the “perennial question concerning the existence” of humanity, as Charles Ives, the father of American Modernism, put it in his foreword to his iconic work “The Unanswered Question”. Richard Strauss’ famous tone poem “Also sprach Zarathustra” has a similar philosophical background. It is a musical riposte to the eponymous enigmatic book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It begins with a sunset spectacularly represented by sounds, which became famous around the world as the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey”. The composer that follows, Hans Rott, deserves to be better known and has been rediscovered in recent years. A pupil of Anton Bruckner who died tragically young at the age of 25, he was a pioneering symphony composer, Patrick Hahn points out. “His music was ahead of its time and foreshadows the musical language of Gustav Mahler.” Time therefore to pay tribute to this symphonic trailblazer on the concert stage.