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 earlier years he wrote a large amount of chamber music. The young Strauss was heavily influenced by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, and it was only later that he fell under the spell of Wagner and composed the operas and programme music for which he is best known. This splendid 9-CD set of Richard Strauss complete chamber music encompasses a huge range of genres for a variety of instruments. Strauss chamber output includes solo works and miniatures, duets, trios and quartets through to concertos, symphonies and melodrama, a once-popular genre that married music with the speaking voice. Early works of note include the mellifluous String Quartet in A Op.2, some of whose themes are modelled on Mozart, and the joyous Serenade in E flat, heard here as a piano solo, already exhibiting the lush textures that were typical of the composer. The Fugue for piano, demonstrates Strauss increas