Richard Strauss Essentials

With a life that straddled two centuries, Strauss—no relation to the Viennese waltz dynasty—revelled in the potential of the huge Late Romantic orchestra. He wrote tone-poems (Also sprach Zarathustra one of the most popular) and a stream of operas that embraced the violent (Salome and Elektra), the aristocratic (Der Rosenkavalier and Capriccio), and the fantastic (Die Frau one Schatten). A great conductor and one of Europe's major musicians, his naive relationship with the Nazis soured his later years, but he remains one of the best-loved composers of the 20th century.