American oboist John de Lancie was a corporal in the U.S. Army unit which secured the area round the Bavarian town of Garmisch where Strauss was living in April 1945, in the closing days of World War II.

The British premiere was at the Proms on 17 September 1946 with the oboist Léon Goossens and the BBC symphony orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.

De Lancie instead gave the rights to the U.S. premiere to a young oboist friend at the CBS Symphony Orchestra in New York, Mitch Miller, who later became famous as a music producer and host of a sing-along TV show.

His only public performance of the Concerto was the company premiere of the piece on August 30, 1964 at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, with Eugene Ormandy conducting.

"[11][12] As with his other late works, Strauss builds up the music from a series of small melodic ideas "which are the point of departure for the development of the entire composition.

[14] However, it also relates back to Strauss's use of the rhythm of the Fate motif in the first movement of his youthful Piano Sonata written over 60 years earlier in 1881.