When he was a mere 18 years old, Richard Strauss composed the highly Romantic, one-movement Serenade for Wind Instruments, op. 7. Extremely popular among wind players to this day, this work recalls in...
Late in the evening on his name day in 1781 Mozart was on his way to bed when he suddenly heard familiar sounds coming from outside: the six musicians who had given the première of his Serenade in E-f...
What might have occasioned Mozart to rework his original Serenade for sextet into a version for octet (with two oboes) only a few months after he had completed it? Was there an 'external” cause? Once...
Reicha published a total of 24 wind quintets for the 'classical' scoring of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon; op. 88 no. 2 is one of the best-loved and most played. 'If it were possible to surp...
Beethoven's Opus 71 is one of a series of works for mixed wind instruments, which he composed in the 1790s. In 1805 at a performance of the dance-like, lively work in Vienna, the audience praised its...
Leoš Janá?ek composed his Suite for wind instruments Mládí (in English youth) in 1924, so when he was over 70. Numerous sources still survive for this work, making it difficult to establish the defini...
Alban Berg's String Quartet can be considered to be one of the founding works of the Second Viennese School. Already composed in 1910 and first published in 1920, it was the last composition the 25-ye...
Mozart's 'Kleine Nachtmusik' is surely one of the most popular works of so-called classical music. Although his manuscript is not completely free of corrections, it is still undoubtedly one of Mozart'...
When Dvořák suddenly became internationally famous in 1878 with his Slavonic Dances, he received, among other things, a request for a new string quartet from Jean Becker, the first violinist of the re...
In autumn 1895, after returning from New York once and for all, Dvorák took up his former position as teacher at the Prague Conservatory. This clearly had an inspiring impact on him because in the spa...
