On today’s date in 1946, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, conducted by Volkmar Andreae, gave the premiere performance of a new oboe concerto by the German composer Richard Strauss, who was then in his 80s. The soloist was a Swiss oboist named Marcel Saillet, to whom the work is dedicated.

The concerto owes its existence, however, to a 20-something American oboist and GI named John de Lancie, who visited Strauss at his Bavarian home shortly after the end of World War II. “During one of my visits with Strauss,” recalled De Lancie, “I asked him, in view of the numerous beautiful, lyric solos for oboe in almost all his works, if he had ever considered writing a concerto for oboe. He answered ‘No,’ and there was no more conversation on the subject.” But De Lancie’s question did plant a seed, and after returning to civilian life in the states in 1946, De Lancie got a letter from Strauss’s publisher offering him the work’s American premiere.

As it turned out, the American premiere of the Strauss Concerto was given by another oboist named Mitchell Miller— a musician who some of us “of a certain age” remember as an energetic choral conductor of a sing-along TV show entitled “Sing Along with Mitch.”

For his part, John De Lancie went on to become the principal oboist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and a famous oboe teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music. In 1988, De Lancie made this recording of the Strauss Oboe Concerto.