Joseph Joachim Romanze in C
Joseph Joachim (June 28, 1831 -- August 15, 1907) (pronounced YO-a-chim) was a violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. He is regarded as one of the most influential violinists of all time.
Joseph Joachim was born to Julius and Fanny Joachim, who were Hungarian Jews, as the seventh of eight children. Joachim was born in Kittsee (KopÄ any / Köpcsény), near Bratislava and Eisenstadt, in today's Burgenland area of Austria. At the time, Kittsee was part of the Esterhazy holdings in Hungary, and for this reason Joachim is often considered to be Hungarian.
Joseph Joachim's birth house in Kittsee.
In 1833 his family moved to Pest, where he studied violin with Stanislaus Serwaczynski, the concertmaster of the opera in Pest. (Serwaczynski later moved to Lublin, Poland, where he taught Wieniawski). In 1839, Joachim continued his studies in Vienna (briefly with Miska Hauser and Georg Hellmesberger, Sr.; finally â€" and most significantly â€" with Joseph Böhm). He was taken by his cousin, Fanny Wittgenstein (grandmother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) to live and study in Leipzig, where he became a protégé of Felix Mendelssohn. In his first public performance with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra he played a violin concerto by Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. The twelve-year-old Joachim's 1844 performance of the Beethoven violin concerto in London (under Mendelssohn's baton) was a triumph, and helped to establish that work in the repertory. Although his second concert tour there was less successful, Joachim was to remain a favorite in England.
