Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, Op. 20 is a tone poem composed in 1888—when the composer was just 24—and first performed by Strauss himself in Weimar on 11 November 1889. Inspired by Nikolaus Lenau’s verse drama Don Juans Ende, the...

 Alvorada na floresta tropical W513 was commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra and written in 1953. In form it is an overture whose performances take eight to eleven minutes.Its form is predictable, though the music itself is anything but. Hushed...

Sergei Prokofiev's Symphonic Song (Russian: Симфоническая песнь), Op. 57, was written in 1933. It's a work demonstrating Prokofiev's transition from Parisian modernism to Soviet lyricism. Prokofiev had described of it as "a serious piece of work, and I...