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BRUCH, Max
b Cologne, 6 January 1838
d Friedenau, near Vienna, 2 October 1920, aged eighty-two

His mother's family was musical. At the age of fourteen he won the Frankfurt Mozart scholarship. He made a leisurely tour of Germany and Austria, under various teachers, and composed much choral work. In 1867 he became director of the Court Orchestra at Schwartzburg-Sondershausen, after which he toured extensively as a conductor, visiting the USA and spending the years 1880 to 1883 in Liverpool. By the mid-1890s he was generally rated as one of the major composers of the century; then his popularity waned, and when he died he was a much embittered man. Despite his setting of Kol Nidrei, the great Hebrew prayer, he was not Jewish.

1856 (18)

String Quartet in C minor

1857 (19)

Piano Trio in C minor

1858 (20)

Scherz, List und Rache, opera

1860 (22)

String Quartet in E major

1863 (25)

Die Lorely, opera

c1864 (c26)

Frithjof-Scenen, for solo voices, chorus and orchestra

1868 (30)

Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor

1870 (32)

Symphony No 1 in Eb major

Symphony No 2 in F minor

1872 (34)

Hermione, opera

Odysseus, Cantata

1878 (40)

Violin Concerto No 2 in D minor

1881 (43)

p Kol Nidrei, for cello and piano, or orchestra

1887 (49)

Symphony No 3 in E major

1891 (53)

Violin Concerto No 3 in E major

1905 (67)

Suite on a popular Russian melody

1911 (73)

Konzertstucke for violin, in F# minor

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