When I listen to the news, I can't help thinking that we need something and someone else to express what we are feeling.

Szymanowski composed right in the midst of WW1 about 4 and a half hours away from Kiev before his home was destroyed.

Respighi created melodies that restore your faith that love may be worth it after all, despite him having lived through1914-1918 and the 1930s.

Richard Strauss died 1948 after having given us the most intense musical lines ever.

Here is one of my favourite violinists of all time, the French Ginette Neveu, who died in a plane crash in 1949, aged 30 with the Strauss sonata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUcJLoVTTkI

Today, I would rather listen to Richard Strauss than Sergei Lavrov.

P.S. True story: Strauss told a friend of mine's father (...) who couldn't play the horn line in a piece that Strauss himself had written

'oh, never mind! It is only background music anyway'.