Over the decades, Richard Strauss has been well served by English-language commentators and scholars, ranging from George Bernard Shaw, through Norman del Mar’s magisterial three-volume study (1962–72), to Michael Kennedy’s shorter, though no less illuminating, critical biography (1999). The focus of Raymond Holden’s work is explicitly narrower than theirs, offering as it does a thorough documentation of Strauss’s career as a practising musician and jobbing conductor.