15 Facts About Max Bruch

Max Bruch was a German Romantic composer, violinist, teacher, and conductor who wrote more than 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a staple of the violin repertoire.

Max Bruch was born in 1838 in Cologne to Wilhelmine, a singer, and August Carl Friedrich Bruch, an attorney who became vice president of the Cologne police.

Max Bruch received his early musical training under the composer and pianist Ferdinand Hiller, to whom Robert Schumann dedicated his Piano Concerto in A minor.

At the age of nine, Max Bruch wrote his first composition, a song for his mother's birthday.

Max Bruch wrote many minor early works including motets, psalm settings, piano pieces, violin sonatas, a string quartet, and even orchestral works such as the prelude to a planned opera, Joan of Arc.

The young Max Bruch was taught French and English conversation by his father, who was very wealthy.

Max Bruch taught composition at the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik from 1890 until his retirement in 1910.

Max Bruch married Clara Tuczek, born in 1854, a singer whom he had met on tour in Berlin, on 3 January 1881.

Max Bruch is believed to have been 26 at the time of the marriage.

Max Bruch belonged to a musical family; her sister was composer Felicia Tuczek.

The couple returned to Liverpool where Max Bruch was conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society and took lodgings in the Sefton Park area.

Max Bruch was buried next to his wife Clara, who had died on 26 August 1919, at the Old St Matthaus churchyard at Berlin-Schoneberg.

The success of Kol Nidrei led to an assumption by many that Max Bruch was of Jewish ancestry, although Max Bruch denied this and there is no evidence that he was Jewish.

Max Bruch was given the middle name Christian, and was raised Protestant.

The sisters played a major part in the fate of the manuscript of the Violin Concerto No 1: Max Bruch had sent it to them to be sold in the United States, but they kept it and sold it only for their own profit.