HOLLAND PARK SINFONIA

Tickets and the Strauss story

September is here – along with our monthly newsletter. First things first. TICKETS ARE ON SALE!! You can get early access tickets for our November concert now until Mid October before they go on full price. Go book yours HERE and come back and read the rest of the newsletter.

Now to the fun part. Stories! We love them! That’s where the heart of this concert is. This month let’s talk about Strauss and his Oboe concerto.

It’s the year 1945. Hitler just committed suicide and the US armies are storming German villages. In the mountain town of Garmisch, the residents were ordered to pack up and leave their homes to the US armies. One 80-year old man refused to move. “I am Richard Strauss, the composer of Rosenkavalier and Salomé,” he announces to them. The unit chief, who was a musician knew exactly who this was and ordered his men to put an ‘off limits’ sign outside Strauss’s house.

Strauss had a complex and difficult life during WWII. Although he was not adherent of nazi values, he was initially drawn to cooperate in hopes that Hitler, who was an admirer of his music would help preserve german art and culture and agreed to oversee development of music under his regime. Strauss attempted to ignore Nazi ban on music of Debussy, Mahler & Mendelssohn. Working for the Third Reich was also mainly an attempt to use the connections to protect his daughter in law – Alice and her family, who were Jewish. He escaped them to Vienna where they stayed in protection. However, his relations with the party grew tense. His Jewish friend and librettist, Stefan Zweig, with whom he was working on a new opera, was fired and the project was shut down and Strauss was forced to resign. Moreover, when Strauss was away, Nazis arrested Alice and held her for several days. Strauss was barely able to secure her release and managed to move them to Garmisch, where they were kept under house arrest till the end of war. In addition, many members of Alice’s immediate family were deported to Theresienstadt. When Strauss’s letters asking for their release were unsuccessful, the composer drove to the camp personally, but to no avail; all died or were murdered.

After the storming of Garmisch, Strauss received regular visits from US military personnel. They posed for photographs, got autographs and listened to him play piano. Among them, the 24-year old soldier- John de Lancie, who was also principal oboist of Pittsburgh Orchestra back in US often had conversations with Strauss about music. As an admirer of Strauss’s beautiful writing for oboe in his orchestral music, he asked hime if he would ever consider writing an oboe concerto. Strauss bluntly said “No”. But the thought never left his mind.

Strauss began sketching ideas and by Fall 1945, he had finished his Oboe concerto. The autograph score bore an inscription – ‘….Suggested by an American soldier.’ The rights of the US premiere were assigned to De Lancie. but after the War, he was only a junior member of the orchestra, which prohibited him from premeiring the work, and was performed by Mitch Miller in New York. De Lancie went on to become an acompolished oboist, serving as principal in Philadelphia Orchestra for 30 years and after retirement, he finally performed and recorded Strauss’s Oboe Concerto, the idea of which he had planted in the composer’s mind.

When you hear the concerto, you an ageing Strauss, looking forward in hope, after all the horrors. The Concerto opens like a warm sunrise, like an uplifting song and carries you in its lushness over landscapes and nature – as if like urging us to rebuild and keep going. Something so beautiful that came out of something so tragic as War.

Last year, in April 2025, oboist Sasha Puller and I worked together for the first time, performing Bach’s Oboe and Violin Concerto and Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe. It was my second ever time conducting and so much fun. She was such an expressive player and lovely human. We talked about the Strauss and decided to get it programmed with the orchestra in the next concert. Conversations were had but alas, it ended up not happening. When I started my own orchestra, I reached out to her and she joined as principal. We talked briefly about trying to make the Strauss happen again, now that we had our own orchestra. I kept waiting for the right chance, the perfect timing and it’s finally here. After the plans of performing the piece together stayed put for an year and a half, we are so excited to be bringing it to the stage on November 13th.

We can’t wait to see you there!

If you have made it this far, I’d like to take this chance to ask for help. We are a very young and new orchestra. I cover all the finances on my own cost, working every day during daytime in day jobs and staying up most nights being a musician. And each concert ends up costing around £2500-3000, a lot of which I don’t make back with tickets. I am currently looking for some funds for this upcoming concert, after some small setbacks in finances so we can put together this beautiful programme. If you would like to support us financially, any amount, please consider doing so or sharing it around. Details can be found on our ‘Support the Orchestra‘ page on our website.

We hope to see you all on November 13th at St Peter’s Notting Hill!

Best,

Jashan and the Holland Park Sinfonia