As if looking back on his youth toward the end of his life, Richard Strauss wrote a second concerto for horn and orchestra, again in Eb major, around sixty years after his first concerto for horn. This sublimely beautiful late work, which gives no indication of the oppressive circumstances of Strauss’ poor health and the Second World War, was premiered in 1943 by Gottfried von Freiberg under the direction of Karl Böhm. It was not until after Strauss’ death that the concerto appeared in print in