Serenade for Wind Instruments in E-flat major op. 7

Scoring: 2.2.2(B).2.Kontra(Bass-Tuba/Kontrabass) - 4.0.0.0

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 instrumentation and structure Mozart’s “Gran Partita”, which certainly served as a model for Strauss.

The serenade was not premiered in its Bavarian homeland as might have been expected, but rather in Dresden, in 1882, under the direction of the then much-esteemed conductor Franz Wüllner, who had also given the inaugural performances of Richard Wagner’s Rheingold and Die Walküre and later premiered Strauss’ tone poems Till Eulenspiegel and Don Quixote. So it was a great honour for the young Bavarian!

Editor Norbert Gertsch presents this little masterwork here for the first time in Urtext quality for which not just the first edition but also the autograph manuscript was scrutinised fastidiously.