Beethoven and Strauss

Back to essentials: that was the step Richard Strauss took in his later years. After a life of Wagnerian abundance, he wrote a few works that enchant through their perfect simplicity. Such as his Second Horn Concerto, for the same orchestral forces as Beethoven’s Seventh. Wagner called that symphony ‘a blissful outburst of joy’; Strauss’s horn concerto is its restrained counterpart.