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