Richard Strauss enjoyed early success as both conductor and composer, influenced in part by the work of Wagner. He developed the symphonic or tone-poem to an unrivalled level of expressiveness and after 1900 achieved great success with a series of impressive operas, at first on a grand scale, but later tending to a more classical restraint. Completed in 1897, Strauss described Don Quixote as “fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character”. He gave the characters of Quixote and Sancho Panza to a solo cello and viola, with the orchestra graphically painting the scenes in which the great Knight attempts his many ill-fated adventures. Fourteen years earlier Strauss had composed the Romance, a short one one-movement lyrical work for cello and orchestra.