Music Director
Max Bruch (1838-1920)
Adagio on Hebrew Melodies for Violoncello and Orchestra, Op. 47
It is sadly fortunate that German composer Max Bruch died in 1920, before all of the atrocities of Adolf Hitler's holocaust were executed. A family named Lichtenstein, headed by the Cantor-in-Chief of Berlin became acquainted with the musician Bruch.
Bruch began his musical life studying piano in Cologne, attracting the attention of pianist, conductor, and composer Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870). When he was only fourteen years old, Bruch won the Mozart Foundation Prize. In 1865, he became Music Director for the city of Coblenz. He later served as Kapellmeister in Sonderhausen, as conductor of the Philharmonic Society in Liverpool, England, and as conductor of Breslau's Orchesterverein (1883-1890). Bruch's last position was as a Professor in Berlin. In 1883, he toured the United States. A concert of Bruch's works was performed at the Ontario Street Temple, Clev land, Ohio, on April 26, 1883.
Max Bruch is well known for his Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 26, and the String Octet, a work composed in 1920, seven months before his death. Kol Nidre is the title of the Hebrew prayer chanted at the opening evening service of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Bruch had always admired the natural melodies of folksong, and Cantor Lichtenstein and several Jewish composers introduced Bruch to Jewish melodies. Bruch wrote to cantor and musicologist Eduard Bimbaum in 1889, “I became acquainted with Kol Nidre and a few other songs...in Berlin through the Lichtenstein family....even though I am a Protestant, as an artist I deeply felt the outstanding beauty of these melodies and I gladly spread them through my arrangement”. There are two versions of Bruch's Kol Nidre, and another composed as a cello concerto.
Program Notes by Beth Bergman Fisher