Richard Strauss : Intégrale de la Musique de Chambre [CD de audio] 1: Wolfgang Sawallisch Piano and Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss was supremely a composer for the orchestra, and of opera and songs, but in his early years he wrote a great deal of chamber music. The young Strauss was strongly influenced by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, and it was only later that he fell under Wagner's spell and composed the operas and program music for which he is best known. This magnificent 9-CD set of the complete chamber music of Richard Strauss covers a wide variety of genres for a variety of instruments. Strauss's chamber output includes works for soloists and miniatures, duets, trios and quartets to concertos, symphonies and melodrama, a once popular genre that married music with the spoken voice. Early works of note include the mellifluous string quartet in A op.2, some of whose themes are modeled on Mozart, and the joyous serenade in E flat, heard here as a piano solo, already exhibiting the rich textures that were typical of the composer. The piano fugue demonstrates Strauss's increasing command of intricate counterpoint. Another important work is the horn concerto no. #1 in E flat op.11, the first concerto with which Strauss really made his mark, and where his genius really begins to show itself with its bravura and freedom from traditional formal restrictions. With his last major chamber work, the violin sonata in E flat, we can almost find the mature Strauss.