Not too many years ago Max Bruch was close to being a "one-hit wonder" in the classical music lists, that hit being his G minor violin concerto. There were a couple of shorter pieces, notably the Kol Nidrei, but there was little available evidence to judge the opinion of some familiar observers that Bruch was as great a composer as his contemporary Johannes Brahms.


With the CD era came an expansion of recorded repertoire, and now Bruch's three symphonies, more concertos, and several other large-scale works are available. None I've heard shows that he was near Brahms' equal, but they have solid workmanship, good melodies, considerable imagination, and other virtues that result in worthwhile music. However, what likely kept Bruch from the highest compositional magnitude is his music's pervasive comfortable Victorian bourgeois outlook.


A look at Bruch's catalog reveals an emphasis on choral music, including that form so beloved of Victorians, the oratorio. Lay of the Bell (as its title is rendered in the flowery English translation of Edward Bulwer Lytton used in CPO's detailed program book) is not religious, but it is moralistic. Schiller's text was a mainstay of German sentiment during the 19th century. Casting a bell in a foundry is an allegory for raising a child to be a good person, presumed to be the path to ensuring personal prosperity and a well-ordered society. This sentiment foundered on the shoals of World War I and went under entirely during the Nazi era.

So this 100-minute-long choral and orchestral piece comes with a strike against it: It's a bit hard to read the text (particularly in the overheated language of Bulwer Lytton, he most famed for "It was a dark and stormy night...") without sniggering, the while Bruch's music plows on with undiminished earnestness. However, heard without first reading program notes or text, it becomes a very interesting, entertaining work, and it remains so on subsequent listening. There is some stodginess in the music, but it doesn't drag despite the pompous text. The large form is shaped well, so that the unexpected presence of the Christmas tune "Silent Night" at the work's end (unexplained by the notes or the text) evokes a satisfying frisson.

The performers approach the work as worthy of admiration, and they prove that it is. Fine melodies, along with an intriguing harmonic language marrying Brahmsian solidity with Wagnerian love of suspensions and other devices to keep harmonies unpredictable, make the music interesting. The four soloists are a fine group, singing with lyrical tones rather than the barking sound often heard in middle-European oratorio performances. Jac van Steen and his orchestra and chorus work well together, and the live audience is well behaved. The sound is a bit opaque, but not to a troublesome degree.

This is a big piece, obviously intended by the composer to be an Important Work. Ein Deutsches Requiem it ain't, but in this recording it provides a welcome insight into a composer who evidently has a lot of good unknown music still mouldering on library shelves.
--Joseph Stevenson, ClassicsToday.com

Trio Soleil consists of Denmark’s foremost pianist Elisabeth Westenholz, the principal clarinetist of the Danish National Radio Symphony orchestra Niels Thomsen and Tim Frederiksen who is the newly appointed professor (in viola) at the Royal Danish Academy Of Music in Copenhagen.

Cho-Liang Lin; Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin. CBS MK 42315 [with Scottish Fantasy; also available with Mendelssohn: Concerto in E minor, and various encore pieces (CBS MDK 44902)] (recorded 1986). Lin’s is a straightforward, expressive reading of the concerto, distinguished by extraordinarily beautiful playing. Bruch was a melodist of the first rank, and the soloist emphasizes that aspect of the music in his warmly phrased account. Leonard Slatkin and the Chicago Symphony provide outstanding support, and the performance is captured in a recording of ideal depth and spaciousness. Two versions of the account are now available; the choice for most buyers is the mid-price recoupling that pairs the Bruch with Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E minor and encore pieces by Kreisler and Sarasate. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Throughout his 82-year life, Max Bruch remained true to the musical ideals of his youth, formed by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and German folk songs. As a result, the same composer who in the 1880’s was regarded as Brahms’ equal, by the time of his death in 1920 was considered an anachronistic irrelevance. Nowadays, however, few would deny that his production includes numerous works of exquisite sonority, beautiful melodiousness and admirable formal cohesion: a glorious irrelevance indeed. His Violin Concerto No. 1 was a spectacular success from its first performance in 1868, and soon won over audiences both in Germany and abroad. In fact, it became so popular that Bruch in later years became increasingly worried about being considered a ‘one-hit wonder’. It is thus a staple of all violin soloists that Vadim Gluzman here takes on, after his recordings of the concertos by Tchaikovsky (‘without doubt one of the work's finest recordings in recent years’, BBC Music Magazine), Barber (‘one of the most beautiful and characterful recordings of this work’, klassik-heute.de) and Korngold (‘Gluzman’s playing lends the work a new vitality and cohesion’, Classica). Supported by the eminent Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and its music director Andrew Litton, Gluzman couples the work with a rarity, a violin version of the Romance in F major, Op.85, composed by Bruch for viola and orchestra almost 35 years after the violin concerto. The composer also made an arrangement for violin and piano, and it is this violin part which Gluzman performs to the original orchestral score. Closing the programme is the String Quintet in A minor in which Gluzman is joined by four eminent string players: Sandis Šteinbergs, Maxim Rysanov, Ilze Klava and Reinis Birznieks. Composed in 1918, the Quintet certainly offers no indication of being the exact contemporary of modernist works such as Stravinsky’s Histoire d’un soldat; on the other hand its almost youthful energy, dramatic instinct and playful exuberance equally belies the fact that it was composed by a man in his eightieth year.

My French colleague Christophe Huss called a few days ago and said "You've got to try the new Bruch Concerto disc on Naxos. It's really excellent." Now Christophe really does know his stuff, and even his Bruch, which is saying a lot. Tovey thought Bruch was a genius, especially for his choral works, but then he said the same thing about Parry, so even great writers on music have their weak spots. Still, there's no denying that in writing for violin and orchestra Bruch was in his element, and the neglect of these two works is rather remarkable.

The Second concerto always has impressed me as being every bit as good as the First. Like its more famous predecessor, it avoids that Romantic Achilles' heel, the sonata-form first movement. Here a voluptuous and melodically stunning Adagio leads to a brief, dramatic recitative and a lively finale. The Third concerto isn't quite so lucky--sonata form rears its ugly head in the very long first movement--but violinist Maxim Fedotov and conductor Dmitry Yablonsky take Bruch's "energico" directive at face value and all comes out well. Certainly, Bruch had no issues with finales (almost as big a problem as opening movements), and that of the Third concerto is particularly winning, and marvelously scored.

Fedotov plays both works splendidly. He has that gutsy, vibrant tone characteristic of so many Russian string players, which means that he's able to relax into the lyrical music without ever turning coy. In the finale of the Third, especially, his double-stopping is a joy, his passage work pretty immaculate, and he projects both concertos with real virtuoso relish. Yablonsky and the orchestra accompany with similar enthusiasm, and the sonics are extremely natural and well balanced. You might be tempted to overlook this release--but don't. Thank you, Christophe!

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Max Bruch bequeathed three violin concertos to posterity - but only one of them continues to be present in today's concert halls. The composer himself regarded his op. 58 in D minor as much more finely composed than the popular G minor concerto. This benchmark recording by Andreas Krecher and the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra disappeared from the catalogue many years ago, but now the D minor concerto is being re-released in an attractive double box featuring orchestral works by Bruch. Along with it's rarities repertoire, the phenomenal acoustic dimensions of the historic Wuppertal Stadthalle and MDG's legendary natural sound make this double album a musical feast for the ears. "Schon Ellen," a heroic ballad to a text by Emanuel Geibel, was one of the most frequently sung choral works during the nineteenth century. Even though Bruch had no qualms about transferring the action from the Indian colony to the Scottish highlands, the dramatic appeal is absolutely irresistible. The 'Swedish Dances' are a genuine discovery. Bruch unfolds an overpowering widescreen spectacle with a Nordic atmosphere in the two suites; with highly imaginative instrumentations and musical magic he evokes magnificent soundscapes. Bruch's Symphony No. 2 rounds off this program of rarities. In it Schmalfuss presents the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra as an ensemble that produces a big sound and outstandingly captures the slightly melancholy tone of Bruch's music.

The violin concertos by Max Bruch and Johannes Brahms are among the most significant works in the violin concerto repertoire. They are regarded as highly virtuosic and place great demands on the soloists. They were composed in the 19th century and remain an integral part of the concert repertoire to this day. They showcase different facets of Romanticism: Bruch's work is melodic and emotive, whereas Brahms' concerto is more monumental and symphonic in scope.

A musical portrait of the German Romantic composer: Bruch placed great emphasis on melody and expression, remaining stylistically rather traditional-even as the music around him was changing dramatically. In addition to orchestral works, he also composed choral and chamber music.