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While the music of Max Bruch (1838-1920) generally strikes listeners as beautiful, imaginative,
and high-minded, critics have tended to relegate him to the status of a minor master. Bruch started
composing as a child, displaying an extraordinary musical talent which was recognized as such by
Ignaz Moscheles. In 1852, he wrote a symphony and a string quartet, the latter work bringing him
a scholarship from the Frankfurt-based Mozart foundation, which enabled him to study with Ferdinand
Breunung, Ferdinand Hiller, and Carl Reinecke. In 1858, having embarked on a teaching career in
Cologne, he produced his first opera, Scherz, List und Rache. He visited several important German
cultural centers between 1861 and 1862. From 1862 to 1864, Bruch lived in Mannheim, where he
wrote his cantata, Frithjof, which audiences received with great enthusiasm. In addition, Bruch's
opera Loreley was produced in 1863. After leaving his Mannheim post, Bruch visited Paris and
Brussels, eventually accepting the position of music director in Koblenz in 1865. In 1867, Bruch became
Court Kapellmeister in Sonderhausen, remaining at that post until 1870. That year, Bruch moved to
Berlin, where his third opera, Hermione, was produced in 1872. Between 1873 and 1878, Bruch,
enjoying his reputation as an eminent German composer, worked independently in Bonn. In 1881,
however, he resumed his career as a conductor, succeeding Julius Benedict as conductor of the
Liverpool Philharmonic Society in England, but he did not get along with the players, who had rather
lax standards. In 1883 Bruch left Liverpool and became director of the Breslau (now Wroclaw,
Poland) Orchesterverein, where he stayed through the end of the season in 1890. That autumn,
Bruch took up an appointment as professor of composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik,
working there until his retirement in 1910 and retaining his rank as a professor there until
his death in 1920.
During his lifetime he had a reputation as destined to become one of music's great composers.
Bruch's best-known work is without doubt his passionately romantic Violin Concerto No.1 in G
minor (1868), a major item in the standard violin repertoire. His next most often played work
is the single-movement work for cello and orchestra, Kol Nidrei. This lovely composition is
representative of his interest in setting melodic material originating from other ethnic groups; he
wrote works on Russian, Swedish Dances, Scottish, and Celtic melodies as well. These
other works, and his three symphonies, are rarities, sometimes revived in the concert
hall and on records and on those occasions usually favorably surprising the audience for their
beauty and fine workmanship.
Music Composed by
Max Bruch
Played by the
Neue Philharmonie Westfalen/Leverkusen
With
Ursula Schoch (violin)
Conducted by
Johannes Wildner
"The Bayer Music Group and their label EBS have a good track record when it comes to the music
of Max Bruch. Someone there must like him. Surprisingly they still issue an LP, although it has been
transferred to CD (EBS 6071), which includes the Overture to the opera Die Loreley and the viola
Romance Op.85, while the other two works on it - albeit with different conductor and orchestra -
appear on the discs under review, the Suite on Russian folksongs Op.79b and the First Symphony
Op.28. Their website lists 15 CDs of Bruch, though one is the LP and the other misleadingly is a disc
of Christmas music which includes two by Bernward Bruchhäuser-Meisemann, born a century later.
Of the remaining thirteen, eight are devoted entirely to music by Bruch, while on the other five he
appears with other composers. As to the works themselves, the usual suspects are there, but the
choral music is worth exploration. In 2005 EBS issued the ubiquitous first violin concerto coupled
with the third (Torsten Janicke the soloist on EBS 6143). The second concerto now takes its place
in the 3cd-box entitled ‘The romantic symphonist’. As far as works for the violin and orchestra are
concerned Bruch wrote nine, which, back in the 1980s, Philips produced as a boxed set of vinyl
played by Accardo under Masur. Together with the three symphonies they are now on CD (Philips
462 164-2 and 462 167-2). The Romanze is also available on Fleur de Son 57925 and Vox Classics
VXP 7906, while Naxos now has it together with the Konzertstück as part of 8.557689. The same
team of Fedotov/Yablonsky on Naxos 8.557395 couples the Scottish Fantasy with the relatively
unfamiliar Serenade Op.75. It is to be hoped that such imaginative policies on the part of the
independent record companies will dispel the commonly held belief that Bruch was a one-work
composer of that concerto and little else.
At the heart of the EBS box-set in their series Der romantische Sinfoniker lies the three
symphonies, previously recorded by Masur (on Philips, who reissued them with different fillers)
and Conlon (EMI), while Hickox did only 1 and 3 with the LSO on Chandos. In fact there are no
less than twelve recordings of the three symphonies, five, three and four of each respectively,
which made an impact in their day (1868, 1870 and 1882) and which went some way to filling
the black hole between Schumann’s last and Brahms’ first over a remarkably long period of a
quarter century. Carl Dahlhaus credits no one with writing any meaningful symphonies during
this time, but it is becoming easier to take issue with his view, thanks to the unearthing of
works by Bruch, Dietrich, Lachner, Hiller, Rufinatscha, Gernsheim, Draeseke, Volkmann and
others. They are not to be dismissed out of hand.
In 1870 Bruch opted for a freelance career as a composer after five years in post as a
conductor/composer at Coblenz and Sondershausen respectively. This pattern of alternating
the security of a paid conducting post with the freelance option as a composer would persist
until 1890 when he became professor of composition in Berlin. Bruch never again achieved
the success of his first violin concerto (1868). Curiously it was through his secular oratorios
such as Odysseus in 1870 that his fame spread, even to England, where its success eventually
led to his appointment to Liverpool 1880-1883. As far as violin concertos were concerned,
he attempted a second early in 1874, but his love life was going through a troubled patch,
and after completing the first movement he lost his muse, the rest of the work becoming
no more than ‘a glimmer of ideas’. He was, however, pleased with what he had written and
encouraged by positive responses from his friends and colleagues, so he decided to publish
it as a single movement Romanze in A minor Op.42. Based on two typically lyrical melodies,
according to one critic it was based on the Nordic saga of ‘Gudrun’s Lament by the Sea’, but
knowing the composer’s aversion to programmatic music and what was happening to him at
the time, it is far more likely to be subtitled ‘Max’s Lament by the Rhine for Amalie Heydweiller’,
whose love he had just lost. As the first movement to his projected second violin concerto
it is unusual in that it is slow, and interestingly Bruch persists with this idea when he did
indeed come to write that concerto three years later in 1877.
By the time Bruch came to write the Konzertstück he was over seventy years old. It was
written for the American violinist Maud Powell, and again it became a truncated concerto,
although this time in two linked movements rather than one. It was dedicated to Willy Hess,
who Bruch had helped to return from his post as leader of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to
teach at the Berlin Music Academy (he had also led the Hallé Orchestra and frequently
performed Bruch’s concertos). Powell gave its first performance at the Norfolk Festival in
Connecticut on 8 June 1911, and part of the work was subsequently recorded, the first music
by Bruch to be so. ‘She has played the Adagio alone, half of it cut, into a machine (!!!).
I told her a few truths’, he wrote later that month. This Adagio uses the Irish folksong
‘The Little Red Lark’ underlining the composer’s love for folk music. It is a beautiful
movement, in slow 3/8 time reminiscent of the Adagio from Op.26, written soon after
the death of his great friend and adviser on matters of the violin, Joachim, and is the
last music Bruch wrote for solo violin and orchestra. Four decades after the G minor
concerto of 1868, the circle had been completed.
Ursula Schoch’s playing in the five works in which she features is both sweet-toned
and full-blooded in sound and passionately committed, at the same time technically
solid with clean intonation and phrasing; the performance of the Konzertstück should
bring a tear to the eye. She plays a 1755 Guadagnini, and now holds a chair among the
first violins of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. She clearly loves
Bruch’s music, and the orchestra and two conductors serve her well in their
accompaniments, despite what appears to have been a mishap in the editing process
when a wrong note was missed by both sound engineer and conductor in the second
movement of the Konzertstück. In the third bar of letter G on the third beat, the
first trombone plays C natural instead of C flat, resulting in a dissonance Bruch would
never have written; (CD 2, track 5 at 4’ 35”) this minor 7th in the chord of D flat
major is a dominant 7th in the home key of G flat major. Despite this oversight,
conductor of the first volume Johannes Wildner gets to grips with the symphonies
after a somewhat tense No.1, the first movement starts sluggishly while the third
has some unwarranted rushing in places (maybe to get through weak passages
more quickly or the result of inconsistency of tempo at retakes). One has to
accept Bruch’s occasional paucity of ideas in his finales, and his reliance on the
arpeggio and the frequent string-scrubbing (which Bruckner was soon to perfect)
to get his effects. Also what Herr Wildner did not know was my discovery of an
original Intermezzo by Bruch, which was the symphony’s original second movement,
but he removed it after two performances in Sondershausen. What Bruch then
did was to call the Quasi Fantasia the symphony’s third (slow) movement, where
originally it was linked (and remains so despite dropping the Intermezzo) to the Finale.
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players,
hence the billing as a SACD premiere recording. For collectors of everything they can
get their hands on by Bruch, apart from the sound, there is nothing new here in the
way of repertoire, but nevertheless they are both highly enjoyable discs and very
much worth the having."
Christopher Fifield, Musicweb International
Download Link - https://mega.co.nz/#!6BgRBaLa!TpCLmr...jtV7J7X8lz09g0
Source: EBS Records/Bayer Music CDs (My rip!)
Format: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, Level: -5
File Size: 842 MB (incl. complete artwork and booklet)
Enjoy! Don't share! Buy the original! Please leave a "Like" or "Thank you" if you enjoyed this! :)