Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), Hungarian violinist and composer, born in Kittsee, Austria. He performed in public in Budapest at age seven. From 1841 to 1843 he studied in Vienna, and in 1843 in Leipzig, under the German composer Felix Mendelssohn. Joachim was orchestra leader and solo violinist to George V, king of Hanover, and head of the music school in the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin. He was one of the first major virtuoso performers whose repertory included many works of other composers, past and contemporary, and not merely works of his own creation. He was a friend of Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann, whose relative musical conservatism he eventually came to support against the more “modernist” school of Liszt, with whose orchestra he had played for a time in Weimar. Brahms' violin concerto (1879) and the violin part of the double concerto (1887) were written for him. The string quartet which he founded and led from 1869 to 1907 was one of the first to bring the Beethoven quartets into the mainsteam repertoire. In his time he was a respected composer, his best-known work being the Hungarian violin concerto. Today he is best remembered for his cadenzas for the Beethoven and Brahms concertos.