Joseph Joachim

Born in 1831, Kittsee, near Pressburg, Austria-Hungary, which makes him a Hungarian violinist. He was known for his brilliant technique and his profoundly aesthetic interpretations of the works of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.

He first studied at Budapest and by the age of 15, he visited London, where he was sponsored by Mendelssohn and achieved an outstanding success as a violinist. In 1849 he led the orchestra at Weimar, and in 1853, the orchestra at Hannover. In 1868 he became director of the Hochschule für Ausübende Tonkunst (Berlin), where he acquired a reputation as a fine teacher, attracting pupils from all of Europe. In 1869 he founded the Joachim Quartet, which became renowned for its performances of the late string quartets of Beethoven. His performance of the Beethoven violin concerto can be considered to have rescued that work from a sort of limbo into which it had fallen, simply because no equivalently gifted violinists could do it justice.

In his playing, Joachim subordinated technical virtuosity to aesthetic values, and he thus brought about a reform in program making that turned away from the spectacular. His close friend Johannes Brahms consulted with him on his violin concerto and dedicated it to him, and Schumann’s Phantasy for Violin and Orchestra was written for him. Joachim’s own compositions, influenced by Brahms and Schumann, comprise chiefly works for the violin, notably the Hungarian Concerto in D Minor.

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