Richard Strauss

Concerto No. 2 in E flat major TrV 283

Richard Strauss composed his second horn concerto about 60 years after his first horn concerto, having recently considered that his actual creativity had come to an end with his opera Capriccio. The late work was just a 'wrist exercise' and not by any means intended for publication during his lifetime, though it does not reveal the depressing circumstances of its genesis during World War II. In the key of E-flat major, with the classic three movements including a rondo finale, the concerto has is a reminiscence of its earlier sister work and seems like a nostalgic retrospect of his youth from an almost 80-year-old Strauss.

Hans Pizka, editor of this work's first Urtext edition, has experienced the performance tradition and history of this concerto at first hand, both as a pupil of Gottfried von Freiberg, soloist of the world premiere, and also as the former solo hornist of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.