Suite in B flat major for 13 Winds, Op. 4, TrV132

The suite unfolds in four movements, each a compact study in a different mood.

Praeludium opens with a confident, march-like theme passed between the winds, establishing the full ensemble's rich, brass-tinged sonority right away.

Romanze slows the pace, giving the oboe and horn room to sing long, lyrical lines over a gentler accompaniment, the closest the piece comes to a slow movement.

Gavotte is a dance movement, light on its feet, built from short, repeating phrases that bounce between instrument groups, a nod to eighteenth century court dances.

Introduction und Fuge closes the work with a short, searching introduction before launching into a fugue, a form where one melodic line enters, then is imitated in turn by the other instruments, layering the texture until all thirteen players are engaged. The movement, and the suite, ends with the full ensemble in a confident unison.

Strauss wrote this suite in 1884, when he was twenty, for a wind ensemble of thirteen players, an unusually large and rich lineup that let him treat the group almost like a small orchestra. It was premiered that year in Munich under the conductor Franz Wüllner, and its success helped bring the young composer to wider attention, including that of the conductor Hans von Bülow, who would soon champion his work. The piece looks backward as much as forward, its dance movement and closing fugue drawing on older forms, but its handling of thirteen independent wind lines already shows the orchestral imagination that would define Strauss's later tone poems and operas.