Richard Strauss’ Suite in B-flat Major for winds, a work that was a major contributor to the growth of the young composer’s career, premiered in Munich on November 18, 1884, in the year it was written, with the composer conducting the Meiningen Orchestra. The commission came about after Hans von Bülow, a renowned German conductor, pianist, and composer of the Romantic era, met and conducted the young Strauss' Serenade in E-flat for 13 Instruments, Op. 7. He liked the work so much that, in the winter of 1883-1884, he requested another piece with the same instrumentation. Von Bülow wrote Strauss, giving him a detailed plan for what he hoped would be another multi-movement work for an ensemble consisting of 13 instruments. The letter arrived too late for Strauss to follow all his suggestions completely, but he did incorporate some of the eminent conductor’s ideas in his four-movement Suite, Op. 4, written for the same 13 instruments as the Serenade. For the premiere of the Suite, Strauss conducted his new work without having had a rehearsal with the orchestra. It was actually the first major performance that Strauss ever conducted; it effectively gave a boost to his musical career. Six months later, von Bülow offered young Strauss the post of assistant conductor at Meiningen.

The Suite looks forward to Strauss’ symphonic works, which he began to compose immediately after completing this work. In fact, Strauss’ handling of the instruments in the Suite could be said to be nearly symphonic at times; nevertheless, the Suite has been somewhat less successful with listeners than his Serenade, perhaps because it is not as melodic. The Suite’s four movements open with a Praeludium, marked Allegretto, which begins with a short motive that dominates this straightforward sonata-allegro movement. Although there is a contrasting second theme, there is very little development; nevertheless, Strauss includes rhythms and fragments of the two themes throughout the movement. He uses a similar design in form and style as he had in the earlier Serenade, maybe because this choice may have been a way for him to confirm his handling of ensemble writing before he composed the more varied music of the other movements. Here, his technique is very secure, and he is able to demonstrate his increasing maturity in idiomatic writing for individual instruments as well as his awareness of texture.

The gentle, second-movement Romance, marked Andante, is the most concertante of the movements. (Concertante means music containing one or more solo parts, typically less prominently than in a concerto). Here, Strauss gives the clarinet a prominent role, beginning early with a cadenza-like passage followed by a plaintive melody. He also gives lyrical solos to other instruments to reinforce the contrast with the clarinet’s role.

The first two movements look somewhat backward to the Serenade, but the final two move in the direction of Strauss’ mature symphonic style. The third-movement Gavotte, marked Allegro, is playful, spirited, and winning, and it does not have much resemblance to the 18th-century French court dance of the same name that originated in Bretagne. Rather, this movement has the feeling of a scherzo, even though Strauss composed it in duple meter.

The finale, Introduction and Fugue, is an impressive compositional and instrumental tour-de-force. The Introduction begins andante cantabile, with the plaintive melody from the Romance second movement. The Fugue, marked Allegro con brio, written in ternary (ABA form), begins with the main theme in the first horn.

The Suite for Winds is scored for 13 wind players: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, and four horns.

During his short life, Schubert was not unknown, but he never really gained stature in public musical life. He died just 16 months after Beethoven, but he inhabited a different Vienna. Although he had some influential friends, Schubert received no support from wealthy families and lived mostly as a lower-class Viennese with a simple lifestyle that might be called “bohemian.” With friends, he attended concerts and admired famous musicians, especially Beethoven, from a distance.

Death and the Maiden was first performed in January 1826 in the home of two amateur musicians, Karl and Franz Hacker. This beautiful quartet, exciting for its rhythm and scope, was not initially successful. In fact, Ignaz Schuppanzigh (first violinist of the famed Schuppanzigh Quartet, which premiered many of Beethoven’s quartets) had trouble playing the part because of his advanced age. He remarked to Schubert, “Brother, this is nothing at all, let well alone: stick to your Lieder.” Yet Schubert, who wrote 15 string quartets, composed one more after this one. The publisher Schott rejected it and requested “something less difficult in easier keys.” The quartet was not published until after Schubert’s death.

The long, restless, sonata-form first movement, Allegro, demonstrates great power and is both dramatic and tragic. In it, Schubert displays his mastery of modulation and includes many ideas; critic Paul Griffiths indicates that a triplet figure shapes many of the thematic motives and links one musical thought to the next. Schubert diverged from classical structures, quite innovatively extending the second subject material so that both the theme’s exposition and recapitulation encompass large scopes, and the exposition of each includes some of its own development. The actual development, therefore, is unusually brief, taking the listener to the coda before the movement’s quiet end.

Schubert used theme and variations for the second movement, Andante con moto, which suits his expressive purpose admirably. The quartet takes its subtitle, Death and the Maiden, from this theme, a slightly altered version of the piano introduction to his song of the same name, written in 1817. The Matthias Claudius text is a dialogue in which the maiden begs Death to pass her by. He replies, “I do no harm. Come, sleep peacefully in my arms.” (While Schubert was being interred only a few yards from Beethoven, a small band of wind instruments played these five variations.) Grief and desolation are most evident here, but Schubert was prompted in his choice of thematic material by a request from friends who loved the melody, rather than, as some commentators contend, because the composer was contemplating his mortality.

The last movement, Presto, brings the quartet to a stormy, galloping close. This finale joins the characteristics of the tarantella, a Neapolitan folk dance, with elements of rondo and sonata form. Interpretations of this movement have also focused on its being a dance of death, but music historians have no evidence that suggests such intentions here. Less controversial is the fact that the modulations and dynamics indicate its Romantic character, and the tonality binds together the quartet as a whole.

Musicologists have suggested that Schubert may have had a more powerful influence on Mahler than even Beethoven did, and that Mahler’s first masterpiece, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) was heavily influenced by Schubert’s late song cycles, Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, an influence that was strong and evident through Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. The influence Schubert exerted again became prominent in Mahler’s final works, Das Lied von der Erde and Symphonies Nos. 9 and 10. Although Schubert was only 31 when he died, the works he composed in the last years of his life are often referred to as his “late style” because the feeling of leave-taking in almost all of Schubert’s last works is similar to that musicologists have also noted in late Mahler.

Mahler had planned on creating string orchestra versions of the works he felt to be the greatest in the string quartet literature. To that end, he had created string orchestra versions of two of Beethoven’s quartets: the “Serioso” Quartet, Op. 95, and the Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131.

Mahler’s arrangement of Op.131 is lost. Thus, no one knows if he had completed it. Only the Op. 95 was ever performed in its entirety in its string orchestra version, but there was so much disturbing booing when it was being played that Mahler sent two orchestra members into the audience to ask the most strident objectors to leave the hall. Critical reaction was also negative, so Mahler cancelled a scheduled performance of Beethoven’s Op. 131 and never conducted it again.

In 1896, Mahler began, but eventually abandoned, a project to transcribe Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet for string orchestra. Fortunately, he got far enough along for later arrangers to finish the job (he marked up the score of the other movements, but with a paucity of annotations), and he did provide posterity with a late-Romantic version of an early-Romantic masterpiece.

Mahler did conduct his transcription of the quartet’s poignant second movement for orchestra, the one from which the title comes, in a concert in Hamburg. Alma Mahler eventually bequeathed Mahler’s copy of the quartet score to Donald Mitchell. From it, Mitchell and composer David Matthews assembled the first published version of Mahler’s arrangement. While Mahler never finished the transcription of the whole quartet, his work on the second movement is an example of the melding of two great composers’ visions.

Mahler’s grand orchestral arrangement of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet showcases the power of two musical giants and is Mahler’s tribute to Schubert, for whom he had much admiration. The arrangement invites listeners to re-experience the quartet’s emotional depth and thematic richness through Mahler’s symphonic lens.

Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos are the most beloved works of the Baroque era. When Bach was creating these six concertos, he was the Kapellmeister in the small town of Coethen, where he was composing music for the court. Some of the concertos were written there between 1717 and 1721, but at least concertos No. 1, 3, and 6 were composed in Weimar before he arrived at Cothen. They were presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg as a collection in 1721, but they were not given the name Brandenburg until 150 years later.

The pieces were based on the Italian Concerto Grosso style similar to the works of Vivaldi’s concertos. But, unlike Vivaldi, each one requires a distinctive, never revisited, combination of instruments. No. 4 showcases both solo flutes (often recorders) and solo violin accompanied by the ripieno strings. Most likely written for the skilled musicians living in Cothen at that time, the music is brilliant and energetic, with a full string chamber orchestra creating the vast and awesome Baroque style.