Max Bruch

Composer, born in Cologne, W Germany. He became musical director at Koblenz in 1865, and conducted the Liverpool Philharmonic Society (1880–3), introducing many of his choral works. He is best known for his violin concerto in G minor, the Kol Nidrei variations in which he employs the idioms of Hebrew and Celtic traditional melodies, and the Konzertstück.

Max Christian Friedrich Bruch (Cologne, January 6, 1838 – Friedenau, October 20, 1920) was a German composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including a violin concerto which is a staple of the violin repertoire.

He received his early musical training in Cologne under the composer and pianist Ferdinand Hiller, to whom Robert Schumann dedicated his piano concerto.

His conservatively structured works in the German romantic musical tradition, placed him in the camp of Romantic classicism exemplified by Johannes Brahms, rather than the opposing "New Music" of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner.

His Concerto No. 26 (1868) for violin is one of the most popular Romantic violin concertos in the concert repertoire. The Bruch concerto uses several techniques from Felix Mendelssohn's violin concerto. Bruch sold the rights to the G minor Concerto to the publisher August Cranz.

Other pieces which are also well-known and widely played include the Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra which includes an arrangement of the tune "Hey Tuttie Tatie", best known for its use in the song Scots Wha Hae by Robert Burns. Bruch also wrote a popular work for cello and orchestra, his Op.

Other works include two other concerti for violin and orchestra (which Bruch himself regarded as at least as fine as the famous first); and another concerto for orchestra with the unusual combination of viola and clarinet. There are also 3 symphonies, which, while not displaying any originality in form or structure, nevertheless show Bruch at his best as a composer of fine melodic talent and a gift for orchestration, firmly in the tradition of the Romantics.

The violinists Joseph Joachim and Willy Hess advised Bruch on composing for strings, and Hess performed the premieres of a number of works by Bruch, including the Concert Piece for violin and orchestra, op.