Actually, there was quite a bit of mis-identification of John de Lancie's location and orchestral affiliation at the time. >From http://www.philorch.org/styles/poa02e/www/prognotes_20050120.html: THE OBOE CONCERTO "Oboe Concerto 1945/Suggested by an American soldier/(an oboist from Chicago)." Thus wrote Strauss in the pocket sketchbook he always kept close at hand. The soldier was, in fact, a young Curtis Institute of Music graduate named John de Lancie, who had at age 21, before he enlisted, been principal oboist of the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner. Upon his return to the States he joined The Philadelphia Orchestra as assistant to his former teacher Marcel Tabuteau, whom he eventually succeeded as principal in 1954. He was later Richard Woodhams's teacher at Curtis, where he served as director from 1977 to 1985. In notes for his recording of the Concerto, de Lancie recounted meeting the great composer through his friend Alfred Mann, a musicologist and later distinguished professor at the Eastman School of Music. Strauss lived with his family in an elegant villa in Garmisch, not far south from Munich. "Once I mustered all my courage and began to talk about the beautiful oboe melodies in Don Quixote, Don Juan, Sinfonia domestica, and others. I wanted to know if he had a special affinity for the instrument. As I was well aware of his Horn Concerto I then asked him if he ever considered writing a concerto for oboe, but his only answer was a simple 'no.'" But the suggestion took hold, as Strauss acknowledged. In early July he wrote to Willi Schuh that "an oboe concerto with small orchestra is being 'fabricated' in my old-age workshop." He completed the short score of the Concerto in mid-September and the orchestration by the end of October in Switzerland. De Lancie, however, did not get to premiere "his" Concerto. That honor fell to Marcel Saillet, who performed it with the Tonhalle Orchestra under Volkmar Andreae in Zurich on February 26, 1946. De Lancie only first performed the Concerto he inspired during the Strauss centennial in 1964, with the Philadelphians and Eugene Ormandy at Interlochen in Michigan. Cheers, Mike Smith Boulder, Colorado