Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss started composing at six and didn't stop for nearly eight decades. His tone poem Don Juan brought wide acclaim, followed by Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Also sprach Zarathustra, and others that made his orchestral writing a standard. Salome, using Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of Oscar Wilde's play, launched his operatic fame; then came a string of operas with Hugo von Hofmannsthal—Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten—that cemented his place in the repertoire. He conducted across Europe and the Americ…