Horn Concerto no. 2 in E-flat major, AV 132

Strauss wrote the Second Horn Concerto in Vienna in the autumn of 1942, sketching it by 11 November and completing the score two weeks later, again with his father in mind. Gottfried von Freiberg gave the premiere with the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm at the Salzburg Festival on 11 August 1943. It opens the series of late works — Metamorphosen, the Oboe Concerto, the Duett-Concertino, the Four Last Songs — to which Strauss gave no opus numbers and none of which he published in his lifetime. Its bright temper stands against the years in which it was made.