Max Bruch is most famous for...?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 March

Not for inventing the dishwasher (as Max Christian Friedrich Bruch didn't, having been born, on the day of Epiphany in 1838, too early to do so), but, from more than 200 compositions, arguably for that Concerto for Violin (in G minor No. 1, Op. 26 (1866))*, or, if not that for you, for one of three other pieces (with very close opus numbers, and even corresponding dates of composition):

* The Scottish Fantasy in E flat major, Op. 46 (1880)

*Kol Nidrei, Op. 47 (1881);

* Symphony No. 3 in E major, Op. 51 (1883)


It is not that his work was not received well by audiences in its time (apparently, his cantata Frithjof, in the early 1860s, was met with great enthusiasm), but it didn't help either that, on account of the second of the works listed above, it was assumed that Bruch had Jewish ancestry and so was not performed in countries under Nazi control, or that music critics since seem to have sidelined him.

And there is, of course, a huge element of chance in what makes it into the repertoire. I have always loved the symphonic music of Vaughan Williams, but it is taking a figure such as Andrew Manze, as conductor, to make out a case for listening to symphonies that I have long valued. I also repeatedly remember how important Mendelssohn was, in a similar way, in making sure that works of Bach such as the B Minor Mass were heard, and also - love or loathe what he did with it - there is the influence of Glenn Gould's first recording of the Goldberg Variations.

With Tchaikovsky, it is rare to hear (least of all live) the Piano Concerto No. 2, and, despite how it was famously received at the time, it is almost always No. 1 that is played. There are also four Concertos for Piano and Orchestra by Rachmaninov, but it is relatively rare for the first or the fourth to be heard.

As to Bruch, although some sources say that he thought that the third concerto was as fine as the first, he seemingly knew where he was in history, and that the reputation of Brahms would overshadow hs own. In an unascribed comment**, he said:

Fifty years from now he [Brahms] will loom up as one of the supremely great composers of all time, while I will be remembered for having written my G minor violin concerto.


In their concerti for the instrument, both men owed a debt to the great Joseph Joachim (violinist, but also composer, as had been Pisendel before him), and - although it is another story - where would either work have been without him?



End-notes

* There are two others, both in D minor.

** Taken from The Rough Guide to Classical Music (London, 2005).


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here