The year 1943

Strauss 's second horn concerto was written 60 years after the first, in November 1942, in the middle of the war. He wrote it quickly, in just a few weeks, but the circumstances were difficult: Strauss was feeling his advanced age, worried about his Jewish daughter-in-law and her family - and the Battle of Stalingrad was raging in the East. The second horn concerto was a welcome escape for Strauss into cheerfulness and a better past. It is not on...