Richard Strauss was not yet 25 when he confronted death in musical terms. However, Death and Transfiguration was not created, as often supposed, as a more or less autobiographical report following a severe illness, but as a pictorial attempt at portraying the final moments of human existence in music. In From Italy, the just twenty-year-old Strauss reflects on a trip to Italy in which he experienced at first hand the beauties of nature and the Roman ruins. Both works are now brought together as Part 5 of the Strauss cycle with Sebastian Weigle on a CD released by OehmsClassics.