Month: September 2026

Strauss’ Horn Concerto No. 1 In E Flat Major: Youthful Outdoor Adventures

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Composed in 1883, the Horn Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 11 is music of the young 19-year-old Richard Strauss. “We sense his young confidence,” says William Caballero, Principal horn player of the Pittsburgh Symphony. “We also hear the gentle, warm, reflective side of Strauss.” Even as a teenager, Strauss knew the horn intimately. His father, Franz Strauss, was the respected first horn player of the Munich Court Orchestra. Strauss inscribed …

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Michael Torke’s “Last Summer”: Music for Solo Violin and String Orchestra

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Last Summer by American composer Michael Torke (b. 1961) is a reflection on the passage of time. Its quietly noble descending bass line is set in sixths, a rich interval Brahms used in his most nostalgic works. (For example, listen to the opening of the autumnal Intermezzo in A Major, Op. 118). This excerpt is part of a collection of twelve meditative pieces for violin and string orchestra, composed in 2025, simply …

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Nielsen’s Wind Quintet: A Cast of Instrumental Characters

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Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s Wind Quintet, Op. 43 unfolds as a musical conversation among a cast of instrumental characters. Composed in 1922 immediately following the Fifth Symphony, the Quintet is scored for flute, oboe (English horn), clarinet, bassoon, and horn. Nielsen was inspired to write the work after a brief telephone conversation with a fellow musician in which he heard, in the background, members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet rehearsing Mozart’s Sinfonia …

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Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor: Climbing Everest

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Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 has been called “the Everest of piano concertos.” Rachmaninov composed it during the summer of 1909 at Ivanovka, his estate in the steppes of southern Russia, before embarking on his lucrative first American concert tour. Without time to properly learn the solo part, the composer practiced on a “silent keyboard” during the trans-Atlantic voyage. He performed it, first with Walter Damrosch and …

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