clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, eight horns in F, E and E, three trumpets in B (briefly used offstage) and two trumpets in E, three trombones, tenor tuba in B, tuba, timpani, bass drum, two snare drums, cymbals, tenor drum, tam-tam, triangle, two harps, and strings, including an extensive solo violin part. In one section, the second violins are called on to play a G-flat or F-sharp which is a semitone below the normal range of the instrument, and which can only be accomplished by temporarily retuning their lowest string. Dedication and performances Strauss dedicated the piece to the 27-year-old Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. However, it was premiered by the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester on March 3, 1899 in Frankfurt, with the composer conducting. The first American performance was a year later, performed by the Chicago Symphony, conducted by Theodore Thomas. The work did not reach England until December 6th 1902, when the composer conducted Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orchestra. Béla Bartók wrote a piano reduction of the piece in 1902, performing it on January 23, 1903, in Vienna. The conductor Joolz Gale was more recently given permission to arrange the work for chamber orchestra, which was commissioned and premiered by ensemble mini on October 16, 2014, in Berlin. Reception The German critics responded to Strauss's caricatures of them. One of them called the piece "as revolting a picture of this revolting man as one might ever encounter". Otto Floersheim wrote a damning review in the Musical Courier (April 19, 1899), calling the "alleged symphony ... revolutionary in every sense of the word". He continued, "[t]he climax of everything that is ugly, cacophonous, blatant and erratic, the most perverse music I ever heard in all my life, is reached in the chapter 'The Hero's Battlefield'. The man who wrote this outrageously hideous noise, no longer deserving of the word music, is either a lunatic, or he is rapidly approaching idiocy." The critic in The New York Times after the New York premiere in 1900 was more circumspect. He admitted that posterity might well mock his response to the piece, but that although "there are passages of true, glorious, overwhelming beauty ... one is often thrown into astonishment and confusion". Henry Wood, with whose orchestra Strauss gave the British premiere, thought the piece "wonderfully beautiful". In modern times, the work still divides critical opinion. According to Bryan Gilliam