Donald Macleod charts Strauss’s early years, including his Second Symphony and Burleske, a work for piano that was initially described by its first performer as being unpianistic.

During Richard Strauss’s lifetime the sound and form of music altered radically. He was born at the tail end of the 19th century and saw the emergence of twelve-tone music and atonality from younger composers like Arnold Schoenberg and his pupil Alban Berg. Strauss belonged to a previous generation and his music came to be regarded as conservative in style, but at the start of his career, Strauss had been seen as something of a modernist, breaking the mould with his series of innovative orchestral tone poems, and with the dissonant sound world of operas such as Salome and Elektra.

This week Donald Macleod follows the young Strauss’s pathway leading up to and including the tone poems, seeing how an immersion in music across his formative years influenced his ideas about orchestral writing, as well as opening up opportunities that helped him to establish a professional career as a conductor.

In his early 20s, Strauss was appointed assistant conductor to Hans von Bülow, then the music director of the influential Meiningen Court Orchestra. It was to turn into one of the most inspirational periods of his life.

Suite in B flat major Op 4
III: Gavotte. Allegro
François Leleux, oboe
Ensemble Paris-Bastille

Symphony no 2 in F
I: Allegro ma non troppo
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Neeme Järvi, conductor

Burleske in D minor for piano and orchestra
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano
Leipzig Gewandhaus
Herbert Blomstedt, conductor

8 Gedichte aus "Letzte Blätter", Op. 10, TrV 141
No. 3, Die Nacht
Louise Alder, soprano
Joseph Middleton, piano

Aus Italien op 16 (1887)
I: Auf der Campagna
Berlin Philharmonic
Riccardo Muti, conductor Show less