2001: A Space Odyssey (soundtrack) Like North's score, Cordell's work was recorded at the now demolished Anvil, Denham studios. "2001" is particularly remembered for using pieces of Johann Strauss II's best-known waltz, "The Blue Danube", during the extended space-station docking and Lunar landing sequences. This is the result of the association that Kubrick made between the spinning motion of the satellites and the dancers of waltzes. It also makes use of the opening from the Richard Strauss tone poem "Also sprach Zarathustra" performed by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan. The use of Strauss's "Zarathustra" may be a reference to the theme of
Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey is 45 degrees south of the lunar equator. Also implausible is the sun reaching its zenith so soon after a lunar sunrise, and the appearance of a crescent Earth near the sun is in complete discontinuity with all previous appearances of Earth, whose position from any spot on the Moon varies only slightly due to libration. Geophysicist Dr. David Stephenson in the Canadian TV documentary "2001 and Beyond" notes that "Every engineer that saw it [the space station] had a fit. You do not spin on a wheel that is not fully built. You have to finish it before you