Violin Concerto in G minor

Max Bruch was born in Cologne on January 6th 1838. His father was a lawyer so it fell to his mother, a gifted singer and music-teacher, to watch over the young man’s developing talents. Indeed, his first studies, devoted to the piano, must have been very successful as no less a figure than the pianist, conductor and composer, Ignaz Moscheles, recognised his precocious talent. He gradually worked his way through appointments of increasing importance becoming a highly respected musical figure both in Germany and abroad. Certainly his fame had spread to England where he spent the years from 1880-1883 as conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society.

Considering how much music Max Bruch wrote in his extraordinarily productive lifetime, it is surprising how little of his life’s work is generally known to concert-goers. Just a handful of his works for solo instrument and orchestra have made it into the current repertoire - the Violin Concertos, “Kol Nidrei” and the Scottish Fantasy are prime examples. Yet, in his own time, his fine reputation was built on a large body of extremely popular works for choir and orchestra. These fine pieces were well known in England among both the choral societies of the north and London audiences – he conducted his “Odysseus”, for solo voices, choir and orchestra with the Bach Choir in London. Damning with faint praise, Grove’s 1954 dictionary says, “His music gives little to discuss and nothing to quarrel about. It is its lack of adventure which limited its fame. He scores for an orchestra of established constitution and uses an harmonic system based on classical precedent”. In spite of all this, Max Bruch’s brilliant G minor Violin Concerto, written in 1868, regularly tops the popularity polls. Let us hope, as he smiles down from heaven on today’s performance, that this is some compensation for the neglect of so much of his music.

Unusually, the concerto opens with a quiet drum roll, soberly expressed chords from the woodwind and a cadenza-like flourish from the solo violin. These ideas are repeated before the movement proper gets underway. So much of this is so familiar and cherished that mere words can do no justice to the music. However, note the transition from the strength of the first movement to the immensely romantic expression of the slow, second movement which is so beautifully conceived and the way that the orchestra gradually builds up the momentum for the entry of the solo violin in the energetic finale.