Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor

The 1870s were a great period for the violin, perhaps because two extraordinary violinists were performing all over Europe and frequently being compared by the connoisseurs of the day. In 1868, Joseph Joachim premiered Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto, his most popular work. Then the Spaniard Pablo de Sarasate won applause all over Europe for his virtuosity. He too played Bruch’s concerto, and it was for him that Lalo wrote his popular Symphonie espagnole in 1874. For his Second Violin Concerto, Bruch turned to Sarasate in 1877, with the Scottish Fantasy — also for Sarasate — following in 1879.

Bruch would have been happier if that first concerto of his had not been such a great success, and if he had not been a contemporary — and hence a rival — of Brahms. Bruch’s Second Violin Concerto was not only immediately compared to the already popular First but also overshadowed by Brahms’s great First Symphony, which was acclaimed all over Germany upon its premiere in 1876. 

The figure of Brahms has continued to affect Bruch’s standing ever since, with the tremendous shadow of Wagner also in the mix. With Germany then so polarized between Brahms and Wagner, it was difficult for other good composers, of which there were many besides Bruch, to make a name for themselves. If the music of Peter Cornelius, Joachim Raff, Carl Reinecke, and Josef Rheinberger were heard more often, we would have much more to enjoy and a more balanced picture of the world in which Bruch lived and worked. 

While the First Violin Concerto is predominantly lyrical, the Second is more dramatic. In fact, Bruch is reported to have designed it to match a scenario suggested by Sarasate himself, in which a battlefield in Spain’s Third Carlist War (1872–76) is littered with the dead and wounded. The first movement, marked Adagio (unusual for a concerto), suggests a young woman searching for her lover, and a sense of lamentation infuses the opening pages. There is a lyrical theme, but although it appears twice, the movement is dominated by the solemn and sometimes forceful tread of a march, perhaps for a military funeral. 

The second movement opens as a thoughtful monologue for violin, couched as a recitative, alternating with a troubled Allegro. The soloist enters first with a horn call, which returns at the end of the movement in the horn itself, with a response from the soloist. This is an allusion to Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, where, at the end of the slow movement, the pianist similarly suggests the theme of the movement about to begin. 

But although the final movement begins with this strong gesture from the soloist, it is not the main theme and is only heard in the early part of the movement. After that, the music turns into a superbly balanced display of what a finale should be, with fireworks for the soloist alternating with some beautifully melodic passages. 

The aforementioned link to battlefield heroics should not be taken too seriously, since it was reported many years after the concerto was composed. Bruch, furthermore, professed a distaste for program music, being instinctively averse, like Brahms, to the approach linked to Berlioz and Liszt. No tone poems or program symphonies for him, which so many 19th-century composers embraced; instead, Bruch preferred the world of the purely musical symphony, the sonata, and the concerto, the true inheritance from Beethoven, as he saw it. 

— Hugh Macdonald 

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.