page_title: Joseph Joachim
section_title: The Schumanns, Brahms; Berlin
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Joachim / Life / The Schumanns, Brahms; Berlin
caption_attribution_description: English: Joseph Joachim 1904 Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Oil on canvas 87.6 x 73.0 (34 1/2 x 28 3/4 in.) Jpg: Friend of the JSS Gallery
context_page_description: Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.
  Joachim studied violin early, beginning in Buda at age five, then in Vienna and Leipzig. He made his debut in London in 1844, playing Beethoven's Violin Concerto, with Mendelssohn conducting. He returned to London many times throughout life. After years of teaching at the Leipzig Conservatory and playing as principal violinist of the Gewandhausorchester, he moved to Weimar in 1848, where Franz Liszt established cultural life. From 1852, Joachim served at the court of Hanover, playing principal violin in the opera and conducting concerts, with months of free time in summer for concert tours. In 1853, he was invited by Robert Schumann to the Lower Rhine Music Festival, where he met Clara Schumann and Brahms, with whom he performed for years to come. He married Amalie, an opera singer, in 1863, who gave up her career; the couple had six children.
context_section_description: Also in 1853,  a committee headed by Schumann invited Joachim to the Lower Rhine Music Festival.  At the Festival, Joachim again soloed in the Beethoven violin concerto. His success made him, it is said, "the most renowned artist of Germany". Robert Schumann and his wife Clara were deeply impressed, and formed a "close connection" with Joachim. Joachim met the then publicly unknown 20-year-old Brahms, and wrote of him that his playing "shows the intense fire...which predicts the artist" and "his compositions already betoken such power as I have seen in no other musician of his age". Joachim strongly recommended Brahms to Robert. Brahms was received by the Schumanns with great enthusiasm. After Robert's mental breakdown in 1854 and death in 1856, Joachim, Clara, and Brahms remained lifelong friends and shared musical views. Joachim's performing style with the violin, like Clara's at the piano, is said to have been "restrained, pure, antivirtuosic, expressing the music rather than the performer."
  In December 1854, Joachim visited Robert at the Endenich asylum where he had been since February, Joachim being his first visitor.
  Early on, Brahms already played and composed for the piano, which "he had mastered in a supreme fashion", but he felt deficient in orchestration. In 1854 he began composing what was to become his first piano concerto, his first orchestral piece. He sent a score of the first movement to Joachim, requesting his advice. After getting Joachim's response, Brahms wrote to him "A thousand thanks for having studied the first movement in such a sympathetic and careful manner. I have learned a great deal from your remarks. As a musician I really have no greater wish than to have more talent so that I can learn still more from such a friend." Later in the composition of the concerto, which took four years, Brahms wrote to Joachim "I am sending you the rondo once more. And just like the last time, I beg for some really severe criticism." The final manuscript of the concerto "shows many alterations in the handwriting of Joachim".
  Joachim's time in Hanover was his most prolific period of composition. Then and during the rest of his career, he frequently performed with Clara Schumann. For example, in October–November 1857 they took a recital tour together to Dresden, Leipzig, and Munich. St. James's Hall, London, which opened in 1858, hosted a series of "Popular Concerts" of chamber music, of which programmes from 1867 through 1904 are preserved. Joachim appears a great many times. He visited London each year from 1866 on. In March 1898 and in 1901–1904 Joachim appeared in his own quartet of players, but otherwise far more often he appeared with resident Popular Concerts artists Louis Ries, second violin, J. B. Zerbini,  first viola, and Alfredo Piatti, first cello, reputed to be "one of the most celebrated cellists" of the time. George Bernard Shaw wrote that the Popular Concerts had helped greatly to spread and enlighten musical taste in England. Joachim had been a mainstay of the chamber music Popular Concerts.
  At 18 of the Popular Concerts at least, Clara Schumann performed along with Joachim, Zerbini and Piatti, presumably playing piano quartets (without second violin), or sometimes piano trios (for piano, violin, and cello). (The programs of those concerts very likely also included string quartets in which she of course did not play, as Ries is also listed.)  A favorite piece of Clara's was Brahms's Piano Quartet in A major. She wrote to Brahms 27 February 1882 from London that the piece had received "much applause". About a performance of it in Liverpool 11 February she had written in her diary that it was "warmly received, much to my surprise as the public here is far less receptive than that in London." In January 1867 there had been a tour to Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland, by Joachim, Clara, her oldest daughter Marie, Ries, Zerbini, Piatti, two English sisters "Miss Pyne," one a singer, and a Mr. Saunders who managed all the arrangements. Marie Schumann wrote home from Manchester that in Edinburgh Clara "
caption: Joachim by John Singer Sargent, 1904
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