Richard Strauss’ orchestral works contain a wealth of autobiographical allusions. This is equally true of the whimsical tone-poem Till Eulenspiegel, opus 28, which was completed in 1895. Strauss felt badly treated by the public in his home town of Munich, because his neo-Wagnerian opera Guntram had closed after only a single performance. In fact he had already planned a one-act stage work about the pranks of the legendary rascal Till Eulenspiegel and his ‘victims’, the town of Schilda’s narrow-minded petit bourgeois citizens. The openly programmatic composition with its phenomenal audacity and unique demands on orchestral technique simultaneously shocked and delighted his public. On this DVD, Zubin Metha conducts the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.