An ‘Indian summer’: by general agreement that is how music historians today describe Richard Strauss’s final creative period, one extending from 1942 until his death in 1949. In the warmth of that unexpected ‘summer’, the elderly composer – by then in his 80s – brought into being masterpieces such as the 'Metamorphosen' for 23 solo strings and the 'Vier letzte Lieder' for soprano and orchestra. And, alongside those works, he also produced the two Sonatinas for winds, in F major and E flat major.

In the Imperial Germany of the decades bridging the two centuries, Strauss had been regarded as a composer of the very front rank, but he had seen his fame diminish considerably during the Weimar Republic of the 1920s. On the one hand, his works were no longer accorded the triumphant receptions of the pre-War period; on the other, his rejection of the more advanced musical idioms, after the harsh sonorities of his operas 'Salome' (1905) and 'Elektra' (1909), had isolated him from the younger generations of composers, who ceased to look up to him as a role model.

Strauss used to call the works of the present recording “superfluous music” - in other words, simple exercises both for himself as a composer and for performers wishing to improve their ensemble technique. But in spite of his own modest claim about their worth, he plainly took a lot of trouble over their composition. We not only find continuous motivic interplay, even in dense contrapuntal combinations, but also notice that in both works he connects the first and last movements through clearly identifiable thematic elements.