Max Bruch

Max Bruch's first teacher was his mother, a singer. Born in Cologne in 1838, he studied with Ferdinand Hiller and Carl Reinecke and then spent decades moving between posts — Mannheim, Koblenz, Sondershausen, Berlin, Bonn, and the Liverpool Philharmonic Society from 1880 to 1883 — before settling to teach composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin in the 1890s, teaching there until 1910; Respighi and Vaughan Williams were among his pupils. He wrote more than two hundred works including the large choral scores Odysseus and Das Lied von der Glocke. His instrumental works include the Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26, revised on Joseph Joachim's advice before publication, the Scottish Fantasy, and Kol Nidrei. He opposed the New German School associated with Liszt and Wagner and died in Berlin in 1920.