An occasional performance of Strauss’s early Symphonic Suite, _Aus Italien_, is probably quite justifiable because of his imposing importance among the composers of today. When a musician attains greatness almost everything he ever wrote becomes of interest to his disciples. _Aus Italien_ calls for little comment. First performed in 1887, it is difficult today to realize the great uproar and rage it evoked. Now it seems quite tame. It was indeed Strauss’s “first step towards independence,” and it is interesting as the connecting link between his very early work and _Don Juan_ and its successors. Its first movement “On The Campagna” is probably the most successful, reaching as it does gravely grey and tragic heights. A sense of oppressiveness fairly overwhelms the listener and there are chords that are exquisite. “Amid Rome’s Ruins” is not nearly so sustained and well-knit. The opening of the third movement, “On the Shore of Sorrento,” depicts with wonderful effectiveness the brilliance of an Italian sea under a dazzling sun—a brilliance that no one who has seen it is likely ever to forget. Strauss, for all his reputed blare and noise, handles his orchestra pianissimo in a manner immeasurably more impressive than anyone else of his time. (The opening bars of _Tod und Verklärung_ and the love scene in _Don Juan_ immediately come to mind). And you can measure a generation’s progress in orchestration by the unruffled placidity with which people nowadays listen to the at-one-time “brilliant, tumultuous, audacious, unusual, and bold” finale—“Neapolitan Folk-Life.” Even the casual concert-goer must notice the amazing duplications that are being offered this season. For two or three seasons a particular composition is neglected; then suddenly it is played five times in half as many weeks. Stransky plays _Don Juan_; a week later Muck, as it were, shows us how it ought to be played. The Symphony Society plays Brahms’s Second Symphony and shortly thereafter Muck administers his reproach to Damrosch. Is there any reason why conductors shouldn’t meet occasionally and plan to avoid such ways? Muck appears the chief offender. His program stated that he was playing Ropartz’s Fourth Symphony for the first time in New York, but Stransky had played it only eight days earlier. When will we hear it again?