Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1

Beethoven Symphony No. 5
Beethoven Symphony No. 7
Brahms Symphony No. 3
Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1
Haydn Symphony No. 88
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto
Mozart Flute and Harp Concerto
Mozart Flute Concerto No. 2 in D
Mozart Violin Concerto No. 1
Verdi Overture to Luisa Miller

Max Bruch
First sketched 1857, first version completed 1866. Premiere: Otto von Koenigslöw, soloist, with Bruch conducting, Koblenz, 1866. Revised version in collaboration with Joseph Joachim. Premiere: Joseph Joachim, soloist, 1868, Bremen, Carl Reinthaler, conductor.

In 1883, Max Bruch boarded a New York-bound steamer departing from Liverpool, where he had been working as a conductor. During his American tour, he would conduct various choral societies in Boston, New York, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Newark, Philadelphia, Chicago and Cincinnati. Biographical material already dispatched to New York in preparation for his arrival made special mention of the first violin concerto: "It may well be said that since Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto no other work of this kind has found and merited such a general friendly recognition." There is no underestimating the popularity this work has enjoyed, but that does not mean it came easily to the composer who was so much more at home writing vocal music. Were we able to ask Bruch himself what it was like to write a violin concerto, he would probably have responded as he did to the publisher Fritz Simrock: "It is a damned difficult thing to do; between 1864 and 1868 I rewrote my concerto at least half a dozen times, and conferred with x violinists before it took the final form in which it is universally famous and played everywhere."
Among the violinists Bruch consulted were Johann Naret-Koenig, concertmaster of the Mannheim symphony and the great soloist Ferdinand David. But it was Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), to whom Bruch ultimately dedicated the concerto and was Bruch's greatest help. Bruch even permitted the publication of Joachim's letter to him concerning revisions. Joachim was the young prodigy championed by Mendelssohn, the virtuoso who toured with Brahms, and the great musician who left his stamp on the German violin repertoire since Beethoven. Joachim's comments did not simply concern fingerings, bowings and other technical questions of how to make the violin part more idiomatic, but also addressed questions of form and the proportions of sections. Joachim even argues that the work is rightly called a concerto and not a fantasia.
Bruch thought "fantasia" might be more apt because the concerto's first movement is an extended prelude or "Vorspiel." The solo part is free, highly virtuosic and lacking in conventional thematic writing. After an opening timpani roll, reminiscent of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, a chorale of strings and winds prepares the soloist's first entrance. It is a bravura journey from there, but one that does not come to an end. Indeed, the first movement does not conclude, but segues into the adagio. The second movement's opening theme is a richly melodic line from which the soloist spins out further embellished lines of exquisite intricacy. The rousing finale will be recognized by many from its introductory gestures before the theme even enters.
Bruch is well remembered today, not for his prolific choral writing, but for the Violin Concerto and for his folkloric music drawing on Scottish, Swedish, Russian and Jewish melodies.