American DJ and composer Mason Bates premiered his compelling 30-minute orchestral symphony Anthology of Fantastic Zoology in 2015.
Each of its eleven distinctive movements conjures up a different mythical creature from Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings, including the mischievous Sprite and the tower-dwelling beast, A Bao A Qu.
The two movements show how music can conjure up creative ideas and powerful pictures in our imaginations.
Listen out for: The middle of A Bao A Qu, when the music starts winding itself back to the start. The piece is a musical palindrome, and just like a palindrome word is spelt the same forwards as it is backwards, the music sounds the same when played forwards or backwards!
