Strauss’s ‘The Blue Danube’ to waltz into outer area

Austrian composer Johann Strauss II’s “The Blue Danube” has, for many individuals, been synonymous with area journey because it was utilized in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi movie basic “2001: A House Odyssey”.

However the world well-known waltz will actually journey among the many stars on Saturday, when the European House Company’s (ESA) antenna will broadcast a dwell efficiency of it into area to have a good time the composer’s 2 hundredth birthday.

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra will play a live performance within the Austrian capital from 1930 GMT, Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director basic, instructed AFP.

The live performance will likely be broadcast dwell on the web and in addition be proven at a public screening in Vienna, in New York at Bryant Park, and close to the antenna in Spain.

“The digitized sound will likely be transmitted to the massive 35-meter satellite tv for pc dish at ESA’s Cebreros floor station in Spain,” Aschbacher mentioned.

And from there, the waltz will likely be “transmitted within the type of electromagnetic waves”, the Austrian astronomer defined.

‘Typical of area’

Like no different waltz by Strauss junior, “The Blue Danube” evokes the magnificence of Nineteenth-century imperial Vienna, which lives on within the metropolis’s roaring ball season.

For Norbert Kettner, director of the Vienna vacationer board, the Danube waltz is a “true unofficial area anthem” due to Kubrick.

The timeless waltz is the “typical sound of area”, Kettner mentioned, with the tunes being performed “throughout varied docking maneuvers of the Worldwide House Station (ISS)”.

When the waltz is carried out on Saturday, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra will ensure that to underline the waltz’s airiness as if it had been floating by area, its director Jan Nast mentioned.

Based on Nast, who put collectively this system for Saturday’s hour-long “interstellar live performance”, music is a language “which touches many individuals” and has “the common energy to convey hope and pleasure”.

Filling a niche

As soon as transmitted by way of Spain’s satellite tv for pc dish, the sign will journey on the pace of sunshine to finally attain NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft—probably the most distant man-made object within the universe—in roughly 23 hours and three minutes.

After surpassing Voyager 1, it should proceed its interstellar journey.

By catching up with the spacecraft and its twin, Voyager 2, Austria additionally seeks to proper a perceived incorrect.

Each Voyagers carry “Golden Data”—12-inch, gold-plated copper disks supposed to convey the story of our world to extraterrestrials.

The file holds 115 photos of life on Earth, recorded in analog kind, and a wide range of sounds and snatches of music.

Whereas “The Magic Flute” by Austria’s composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was included among the many collection of 27 music items, Strauss’s well-known waltz was not.

© 2025 AFP