Oboe Concerto

The Oboe Concerto exists because of a question put to Strauss at Garmisch in 1945 by an American soldier, John de Lancie, an oboist in civilian life, who asked whether he had ever considered writing a concerto for the instrument. Strauss said no, then wrote one within months; the sketchbooks run through that autumn. The Tonhalle Orchestra gave the first performance in Zurich in February 1946. De Lancie, back in the United States by then, was not the first soloist, though the piece would not exist without him. Strauss left it, like the other late works, without an opus number.