Carl Reinecke, “Persönliche Erinnerungen an Joseph Joachim,” Deutsche Revue 34, no. 4 (1909): 91–95. 

English translation below (c) Robert Whitehouse Eshbach 2025

Persönliche Erinnerungen an Joseph Joachim
Von
Karl Reinecke

Am Abend des 16. November 1843 schritt ich den kurzen Weg von meiner Wohnung zum alten Gewandhause in Leipzig; es war für mich ein bedeutsamer Weg, denn an dieser altberühmten Stätte, wo von Mozart an fast jeder große Künstler gespielt und wo Mendelssohn sieben Jahre mit heiligem Eifer seines Amtes als Kapellmeister gewaltet hatte, sollte ich mich nun als berufener Künstler ausweisen. Ein Solistenzimmer gab es in diesen geheiligten, aber äußerlich so bescheidenen Räumen nicht, und bis ich an den Flügel gerufen wurde, hätte ich den Klängen der vorangehenden Nummern durch die Tür lauschen müssen, wenn es mir nicht gelungen wäre, mich in einem Winkelchen
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auf dem Podium zu verstecken. Eine Sinfonie von Haydn und eine Arie aus dessen „Schöpfung“ waren verrauscht, und nun trat ein zwölfjähriger Knabe im Jäckchen und mit umgeschlagenen Hemdkragen auf und trug die seinerzit berühmte Othellophantasie von Ernst mit vollendeter Virtuosität und mit knabenhafter Unbefangenheit vor. Es war Joseph Joachim, dem am Schlusse das sonst etwas reservierte Gewandhauspublikum stürmisch zujubelte. Ich hatte noch eine ganze Weile zu warten, bis ich mich an den Flügel setzen mußte, um Mendelssohns Serenade und Allegro giojoso zu spielen. Daß das Publikum meine Leistung zwar freundlich aufnahm, mir aber nicht in einer Weise zujubelte wie dem zwölfjährigen Wunderknaben, kränkte mich nicht, denn ich war verständig genug, um es als selbstverständlich zu erachten, daß das Publikum einen Knaben, der auf seiner Geige das ganze Feuerwerk eines brillanten Virtuosenstückes hatte aufblitzen lassen, enthusiastischer entließ als einen neunzehnjährigen befrackten Jüngling, der die liebenswürdige, aber keineswegs bravourmäßig ausgestattete Serenade von Mendelssohn vorgetragen hatte. Von diesem Tage an, da wir beide unser Debüt im Gewandhaussaale ablegten, bis zu Joachims Tode sind wir beide stets in treuer Freundschaft verbunden geblieben. Am Abend des 16. November 1843 hätte keiner von uns ahnen können, daß der eine bis an sein hohes Alter fast alljährlich ein jubelnd bewillkommter Gast im Gewandhause sein würde, der andere aber fünfunddreißig Jahre lang als Kapellmeister dieses Konzertinstituts fungieren und dreiundsechzig Jahre später bei der Feier von Mozarts hundertfünfzigstem Geburtstage ein Konzert dieses Meisters in den Pracht­räumen des neuen Gewandhauses spielen würde. 

Joachim war das siebente Kind jüdischer Eltern, die in einem kleinen Orte in der Nähe von Preßburg lebten. Ohne musikalisches Talent von Vater oder Mutter ererbt zu haben, zeigte sich ein solches dennoch sehr früh, und schon mit sieben Jahren trat der kleine Mann im Adelssaale in Pest als Geiger auf; infolgedessen hatte er das Glück, aufs Konservatorium in Wien gebracht zu werden, woselbst ihm der Vorzug zuteil ward, den Unterricht des berühmten Geigenmeisters Joseph Böhm zu genießen, der ihn zu dem machte, der als Dreizehnjähriger schon einen Mendelssohn imponieren konnte. Mit rührender Dankbarkeit hing er an seinem Lehrer und widmete ihm auch sein Opus 1 Andantino und Allegro scherzoso für Violine mit Orchester. Eine sehr schwierige, vierunddreißig Takte umfassende Kadenz zu diesem Werke schrieb er mir in mein Album mit der Unterschrift: „Meinem lieben hochgeschätzten Freunde C. Reinecke zur Erinnerung an Jos. Joachim.“ Wie die Schrift noch den Knaben verrät, so hatte er auch nach knabenhafter Weise vergessen, das Datum hinzuzufügen; es wird aus dem Jahre 1844 stammen, und zwischen diesem, seinem ersten und seinem letzten an mich gerichteten Schriftstück, dem Glückwunsch zu meinem achtzigsten Geburtstage, welchen er am 23. Juni 1904 namens der Königlichen Akademie der Künste an mich richtete, mögen wohl rund sechzig Jahre liegen. 

Ganz naturgemäß stak Joachim bei seinem Erscheinen in Leipzig noch ganz 
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im Banne der Virtuosität, aber durch den steten Umgang mit Mendelssohn, der den Knaben wie ein Vater liebte und förderte, ward er gar bald ins Heiligtum der Kunst eingeführt, und fortan verwendete er seine Virtuosität lediglich zur vollendeten Wiedergabe wahrhaftiger Kunstwerke der Geigenliteratur. Im Jahre 1853 spielte er auf dem Niederrheinischen Musikfeste zu Düsseldorf, und ich hatte zufällig das Glück, diesem seinem ersten Auftreten in den Rheinlanden beiwohnen zu können. Welch ein Andrer, Größerer war er inzwischen geworden. Einst Diener der Virtuosität, jetzt Priester der Kunst. Er spielte das Beethovensche Violinkonzert, das bis dahin unerreichte, welches von dem Augenblicke an, da Joachim es sich zu eigen gemacht hatte, erst in seiner ganzen Größe erkannt worden ist. Wie ein jugendlicher Held, vornehm, aber anspruchslos, erschien er auf dem Podium; kaum jedoch hatte er die ersten, gleichsam verklärten Anfangstakte des Solo gespielt, so sprang ihm infolge der tropischen Hitze, die in der Konzertsaale herrschte, die Quinte, doch rasch entschlossen nahm er dem Konzertmeister Theodor Pixis dessen Geige aus der Hand und spielte, als ob nichts vorgefallen wäre, den ganzen Satz auf der fremden Geige zu Ende. Es ist ein müßiges Beginnen, solch vollendetes Spiel mit Worten zu beschreiben. Aber noch heute, nach sechsundfünfzig Jahren, erinnere ich mich deutlich, daß ich nach diesem Vortrage mich in die einsamen Gänge des Hofgartens schlich, um ungestört den gehabten Kunstgenuß noch einmal in meinem Innern zu durchleben. — In demselben Jahre gab ich mit Joachim ein Konzert in Bremen, in welchem wir u. a. die Kreutzer‑Sonate von Beethoven und das reizvolle H‑Moll‑Rondo von Franz Schubert spielten. Als wir am andern Morgen allein im Eisenbahncoupé saßen, trieben wir allerlei musikalische Allotria, gaben uns Scharaden auf und improvisierten zweistimmige Kanons u. s. w., da sah ich plötzlich auf der Fußmatte etwas Goldiges blinken und rief: „Schau her, Joachim, da liegt ein Louis­d’or!“ Er war ebenso erstaunt über diesen Fund wie ich, ward aber ganz verblüfft, als wir nach und nach mehr von diesen angenehmen Goldstücken fanden. Da ging ihm plötzlich ein Licht auf: er hatte seinen Anteil an der Konzerteinnahme blank in seine Hosentasche gesteckt, und diese hatte ein Loch. — 

Joachim, welcher bis dahin nur vorübergehend und auf kurze Zeit feste Stellungen eingenommen hatte (so als Lehrer des Violinspiels am Konservatorium in Leipzig und als Konzertmeister in Weimar), nahm im Jahre 1853 die Berufung des Königs Georg V. von Hannover an, welcher ihn zu seinem Kammervirtuosen und zum Königlichen Konzertmeister ernannt hatte. In dieser Stellung verblieb er bis zum Jahre 1866. Im Jahre 1863, kurz nachdem er sich mit der trefflichen Sängerin Amalie Weiß vermählt hatte, lud er mich ein, in einem von ihm geleiteten Abonnementskonzert meine Ouvertüre zu Calderons „Dame Kobold“ zu dirigieren und bei dieser Gelegenheit sein Gast in seinem neuen Heim zu sein. Es ist mir eine liebe Erinnerung, Zeuge gewesen zu sein von dem jungen Glück dieses herrlichen Künstlerpaares. — Ein eigentümlicher Zufall ist es, daß die Zahl „3“ eine solche Rolle in meinen markantesten Begegnungen mit Joachim spielt: Unser erstes Begegnen war im Jahre 1843, zehn 
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Jahre später gab ich mit ihm das Konzert in Bremen, abermals nach zehn Jahren trat ich, wie soeben erzählt, in seinem Konzert als Komponist und Dirigent auf, und im Jahre 1873 spielten wir miteinander die H‑Moll‑Sonate von Joh. Seb. Bach in einem Konzerte in Leipzig, welches von den Freunden und Verehrern des Niederkomponisten Robert Franz veranstaltet wurde, um dem durch Ohren‑ und Hand­leiden schwer geprüften Künstler eine Ehrengabe überreichen zu können. Im Jahre 1883 hatte ich zum erstenmal die Freude, Joachim als Quartettspieler mit seinen trefflichen Genossen de Ahna, Wirth und Hausmann begrüßen zu können. Am 23. April fand diese Quartettsoiree im Saale des Gewandhauses vor einem erwartungsvoll gespannten Hörerkreise statt. Zwar hatte ich meinen Freund gar manches Mal schon als Quartettspieler bewundert, aber niemals als Haupt des von ihm in Berlin gebildeten Quartetts, einer Korona von Künstlern ersten Ranges, die sich nun bereits seit Jahren so ineinander eingelebt hatten, daß nirgends eine Schwäche, nirgends ein Hervordrängen des einzelnen zu entdecken war, und daß selbst die improvisierte Nuance, die sich irgendeiner gestattete, sofort von den übrigen erfaßt wurde, als wäre sie in den Proben vorbereitet worden. Mir war es mit Erfolg gelungen, diese illustre Vereinigung zu einem Besuche Leipzigs zu veranlassen, und ich hatte die Freude, daß das Leipziger Publikum den vollendeten Leistungen volles Verständnis entgegenbrachte. Man begegnet manchem großen Virtuosen, der da scheitert, wenn er Meisterwerke der Kammermusik zur Erscheinung bringen soll, weil ihm das Verständnis für diese edelste aller Kunstgattungen abgeht, aber Joachim, der in allen Sätteln gerechte Musiker von sicherstem Stilgefühl und feinstem Empfinden, wußte mit seinen Kunstgenossen ebenso hinreißend ein sonnig‑heiteres Quartett von Haydn wie das tiefsinnige der Beethoven’schen Muse zu interpretieren, ebenso wohl den romantischen Zauber in Schumanns oder Schuberts Schöpfungen zur Geltung zu bringen wie die schlichte Größe und deutsche Anmut eines Mozart. Und abermals zehn Jahre später traf ich mit Joachim am Rhein zu gemeinschaftlichem Musizieren zusammen. Am 2. Februar 1889 hatte die „Bonner Zeitung“ folgende kurze Notiz gebracht: „Das Haus Bonngasse Nr. 20 — Beethoven’s Geburtshaus — ist für den Preis von 57 000 Mark von dem jetzigen Besitzer an Herrn … hierselbst verkauft worden.“ Es hatten sich nämlich kurz zuvor kunstbegeisterte Männer von Bonn vereinigt, um dieses denkwürdige Haus, in dem der größte Sohn dieser Stadt das Licht der Welt erblickt hatte, zu erwerben und der Nachwelt als ein Denkmal pietätvoller Dankbarkeit zu erhalten. So entstand der Verein „Beethoven‑Haus“ zu Bonn. Um die nötigen Mittel zur Durchführung dieses Unternehmens zu beschaffen, entschloß man sich zur Veranstaltung periodisch wiederkehrender Kammermusikfeste großen Stiles mit muster­gültigen Aufführungen. Das erste dieser Feste fand deshalb im Jahre 1890 vom 11. bis 15. Mai statt. Joachim war zum Ehrenpräsidenten des Vereins ernannt worden, und sein Quartett war natürlich eine Hauptattraktion. Leider war de Ahna inzwischen von hinnen geschieden, jedoch durch 
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einen Schüler Joachims aufs beste ersetzt worden. Auf diesem Feste trug ich u. a. mit Joachim und Alfred Piatti Beethovens Trio Op. 70 Nr. 2 vor. Als wir drei später photographiert wurden, addierten wir unsre Lebensjahre und gewannen die stattliche Zahl von 193. Das zweite Fest ward im Jahre 1893 vom 10. bis 14. Mai gefeiert, und kam die Zahl „3“ wieder einmal zu ihrem Rechte, denn ich hatte wiederum mit Joachim ein großes Trio von Beethoven zu spielen. 

In Kürze sei schließlich noch der beiden Feiern gedacht, die bei der Enthüllung der Denkmäler für Mendelssohn in Leipzig und für Schumann in Zwickau stattfanden. Am 26. Mai 1892 ward das erzene Standbild Mendelssohns enthüllt und gipfelte die Feier in einem Festkonzerte im neuen Gewandhause, welches ich leitete und in dem Joachim das Mendelssohnsche Violinkonzert spielte, während wir beide uns am Vorabend bei einer mehr intimen Feier bei der Ausführung Mendelssohnscher Kammermusikwerke beteiligten. Die Enthüllung des Schumannmonumentes ward mit einem mehrtägigen Musikfeste gefeiert, und zwar Juni 1901. Joachim und ich, als die einzigen noch lebenden Künstler, die Schumann nahegestanden hatten, waren eingeladen, das Fest im Verein mit dem einheimischen Musikdirektor zu leiten und desgleichen uns als Ausführende daran zu beteiligen. Als Joachim unter meiner Führung des Orchesters die Geigenphantasie des Meisters vortrug und plötzlich vor übergroßer Rührung den Faden verlor, ward es auch mir weh ums Herz, und es war wohl zu verstehen, wenn wir uns nach Beendigung des Stückes in den Armen lagen, des so trübe dahingeschiedenen, von uns so geliebten Meisters gedenkend. Das war mein letztes Zusammensein mit Joachim. 

Nun ist auch er, der große Geigenmeister, heimgegangen. Die jüngere Generation, die ihn nur in seinen letzten Lebensjahren geigen hörte, behauptete, oft enttäuscht zu sein, weil sie wohl die Schwächen bemerkte, die durch die gealterten Glieder bedingt waren, nicht aber die Größe seines Stils und die einfache Schönheit seines Vortrages zu würdigen wußte. Man mag es bedauern, daß Verhältnisse ihn zwangen, noch bis kurz vor seinem Ende öffentlich aufzutreten; aber es fällt darum doch kein Blättchen aus dem immergrünen Lorbeer, der seine edle Stirn umwindet.
 

 
Personal Memories of Joseph Joachim
by Carl Reinecke
 

On the evening of 16 November 1843 I walked the short way from my lodgings to the old Gewandhaus in Leipzig; it was a significant path for me, for in that time‑honored place, where from Mozart onward almost every great artist had played and where Mendelssohn had, with sacred zeal, discharged the post of Kapellmeister for seven years, I was now to present myself as a fully fledged artist. There was no soloist’s room in those hallowed but outwardly so modest quarters, and until I was called to the piano I would have had to listen through the door to the sounds of the preceding numbers, had I not succeeded in hiding myself in a little corner on the platform. A symphony by Haydn and an aria from his “Creation” had died away, and now a twelve‑year‑old boy appeared in a little jacket and with turned‑down shirt collar and played Ernst’s then famous Othello Fantasy with consummate virtuosity and boyish self‑possession. It was Joseph Joachim, to whom, at the end, the otherwise somewhat reserved Gewandhaus audience gave stormy applause. I still had quite a while to wait before sitting down at the piano to play Mendelssohn’s Serenade and Allegro giojoso. That the audience received my performance kindly, but did not cheer me in the same way as the twelve‑year‑old child prodigy, did not hurt me, for I was sensible enough to regard it as self‑evident that the audience would greet with greater enthusiasm a boy who had made the entire fireworks of a brilliant virtuoso piece flash from his violin than a nineteen‑year‑old, properly tail‑coated youth who had played Mendelssohn’s amiable but by no means bravura‑like Serenade. From that day on, when we both made our debuts in the Gewandhaus hall, down to Joachim’s death we remained united in faithful friendship. On the evening of 16 November 1843 neither of us could have guessed that the one would, almost every year until his old age, be a joyfully welcomed guest in the Gewandhaus, while the other would serve for thirty‑five years as Kapellmeister of this concert institution and, sixty‑three years later, would conduct a concert of this master in the splendid rooms of the new Gewandhaus in celebration of Mozart’s one hundred and fiftieth birthday.

Joachim was the seventh child of Jewish parents who lived in a small town near Pressburg. Although he had inherited no musical talent from either father or mother, such a gift nevertheless revealed itself very early, and already at the age of seven the little fellow appeared as a violinist in the Adelskasino in Pest; in consequence he had the good fortune to be taken to the Conservatory in Vienna, where he had the privilege of receiving instruction from the famous violinist Joseph Böhm, who made him into someone who, already at thirteen, could impress a Mendelssohn. With touching gratitude, he clung to his teacher and dedicated to him his Opus 1, Andantino and Allegro scherzoso for violin and orchestra. He wrote a very difficult cadenza of thirty‑four bars to this work in my album with the inscription: “To my dear and highly esteemed friend C. Reinecke in memory of Jos. Joachim.” As the handwriting still reveals the boy, so he had also, in boyish fashion, forgotten to add the date; it must be from the year 1844, and between this, his first letter to me, and his last written communication to me, the congratulatory note on my eightieth birthday, which he addressed to me on 23 June 1904 in the name of the Royal Academy of Arts, there lie roughly sixty years.

Quite naturally, when Joachim made his appearance in Leipzig he was still entirely under the spell of virtuosity, but through his constant association with Mendelssohn, who loved and encouraged the boy like a father, he was soon introduced into the most sacred realm of art, and from then on he used his virtuosity solely for the perfect realization of genuinely artistic works of the violin literature. In 1853 he played at the Lower Rhine Music Festival in Düsseldorf, his first appearance in the Rhineland, which, quite by chance, I had the good fortune to be able to attend. What a different, greater man he had become in the meantime. Formerly a servant of virtuosity, now a priest of art. He played Beethoven’s violin concerto, that until then unsurpassed work which was first recognized in its full greatness from the moment Joachim made it his own. Like a youthful hero, noble yet unassuming, he appeared on the platform; but scarcely had he played the first, as it were transfigured, opening bars of the solo when, owing to the tropical heat that prevailed in the concert hall, the E string snapped; yet he quickly and resolutely took the concertmaster Theodor Pixis’s violin from his hand and, as if nothing had happened, played the entire movement to the end on the unfamiliar instrument. It is a futile undertaking to try to describe such perfect playing in words. But even today, fifty‑six years later, I remember clearly how, after this performance, I slipped into the solitary paths of the Hofgarten in order, undisturbed, to relive within myself the artistic enjoyment I had received. That same year I gave a concert with Joachim in Bremen, in which we played, among other things, Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata and Schubert’s delightful rondo in B minor. The next morning, when we were alone together in a railway compartment, we indulged in all kinds of musical horseplay, set each other charades and improvised two‑part canons and so on, when I suddenly saw something golden gleam on the floor‑mat and cried: “Look, Joachim, there lies a louis d’or!” He was as astonished at this find as I was, but became quite dismayed when we gradually discovered more of these pleasant gold pieces. Then suddenly a light dawned on him: he had put his share of the concert takings loose into his trouser pocket, and it had a hole.

Joachim, who until then had held only temporary and short‑term posts (for example as teacher of violin playing at the Conservatory in Leipzig and as concertmaster in Weimar), accepted in 1853 the appointment of King George V of Hanover, who had named him his chamber virtuoso and royal concertmaster. He remained in this position until 1866. In 1863, shortly after he had married the excellent singer Amalie Weiß, he invited me to conduct, in a subscription concert directed by him, my overture in C major to Calderon’s “Dame Kobold,” and on this occasion to be his guest in his new home. It is a dear memory for me to have been witness to the youthful happiness of this splendid artist couple. A peculiar coincidence is that the number “3” plays such a role in my most striking encounters with Joachim: our first meeting was in 1843; ten years later I gave the concert in Bremen with him; another ten years later, as just related, I appeared in his concert as composer and conductor, and in 1873 we played together Bach’s B minor sonata in a concert in Leipzig which was organized by the friends and admirers of the now‑deceased composer Robert Franz in order to present the artist, heavily afflicted with ear and hand ailments, with a token of honor. In 1883 I had for the first time the pleasure of welcoming Joachim as quartet player together with his excellent colleagues de Ahna, Wirth, and Hausmann. On 23 April this quartet soirée took place in the hall of the Gewandhaus before a circle of listeners tense with expectation. I had indeed admired my friend many a time as quartet player, but never as the head of the quartet he had formed in Berlin, a crown of artists of the first rank, who had grown so intimate with one another over the years that no weakness, no pushing of any individual was to be detected, and even the improvised nuance that any one of them permitted himself was immediately grasped by the others as if it had been prepared in rehearsal. I had succeeded in persuading this illustrious ensemble to visit Leipzig, and it gave me joy that the Leipzig public responded to their perfect performances with complete understanding. One meets many a great virtuoso who fails when he is called upon to present masterpieces of chamber music, because he lacks the understanding for this noblest of all art forms; but Joachim, a musician sure‑seated in every saddle, of the most reliable sense of style and the finest feeling, knew how, together with his artistic comrades, to interpret as irresistibly a sunny, cheerful quartet by Haydn as the profound creations of Beethoven’s muse, and equally to bring to life the romantic magic of Schumann’s or Schubert’s works and the simple greatness and German grace of a Mozart.

And yet another ten years later I met Joachim again on the Rhine for joint music‑making. On 2 February 1889 the Bonner Zeitung carried the following brief notice: “The house Bonngasse No. 20 — Beethoven’s birthplace — has been sold by its present owner to Mr. … of this city for the price of 57,000 marks.” Not long before, art‑loving men of Bonn had joined forces to acquire this memorable house, in which the greatest son of that city had first seen the light of the world, and to preserve it for posterity as a monument of reverent gratitude. Thus the “Beethoven‑Haus” association in Bonn came into being. To procure the necessary funds for carrying out this enterprise, it was decided to organize periodically recurring chamber‑music festivals on a large scale with exemplary performances. The first of these festivals therefore took place in 1890 from 11 to 15 May. Joachim had been appointed honorary president of the association, and his quartet was naturally one of the chief attractions. Unfortunately, de Ahna had meanwhile passed away, but he was admirably replaced by one of Joachim’s pupils. At this festival I played, among other things, Beethoven’s Trio Op. 70 No. 2 with Joachim and Alfred Piatti. When the three of us were later photographed, we added together our ages and arrived at the imposing sum of 193. The second festival was held in 1893 from 10 to 14 May, and once again the number “3” came into its own, for again I had to play a large Beethoven trio with Joachim.

Finally, mention should be made of the two celebrations at which the monuments to Mendelssohn in Leipzig and to Schumann in Zwickau were unveiled. On 26 May 1892 the bronze statue of Mendelssohn was revealed, and the celebration culminated in a gala concert in the new Gewandhaus, which I conducted and in which Joachim played Mendelssohn’s violin concerto, while on the previous evening we both had taken part in a more intimate gathering devoted to Mendelssohn’s chamber music. The unveiling of the Schumann monument was celebrated with a multi‑day music festival in June 1901. Joachim and I, as the only surviving artists who had been close to Schumann, were invited to direct the festival together with the local music director, and likewise to take part as performers. When Joachim, under my direction of the orchestra, performed the master’s violin fantasy and suddenly, from overwhelming emotion, lost the thread, it tore at my heart as well, and it was only natural that, at the end of the piece, we should fall into each other’s arms, thinking of the so sadly departed master whom we had loved so much. That was my last time together with Joachim.

Now he too, the great master of the violin, has gone home. The younger generation, who heard him play only in the last years of his life, often claimed to be disappointed, because they noticed the weaknesses due to his aging limbs but did not know how to appreciate the greatness of his style and the simple beauty of his delivery. One may regret that circumstances forced him to appear in public until shortly before his end; but not a single leaf falls on that account from the evergreen laurel that encircles his noble brow.
 
 

 

From: The Memoirs of Carl Flesch, trans. Hans Keller, ed. Hans Keller in collaboration with C. F. Flesch, foreword by Max Rostal (London: Rockliff Publishing Corporation, 1957), 30–38. 

In this memoir, Carl Flesch presents an assessment of Joseph Joachim’s character and art, portraying him as a towering yet deeply flawed figure whose greatest impact lay less in pure violinistic technique than in musical ethics, programming, and interpretive ideals. He admires Joachim’s quartet leadership, spiritual depth, nobility of musical outlook, and improvisatory intuition, while stressing his relatively early technical decline, cool tone, nervousness in solo roles, and problematic bowing concept that, in his view, produced many technically damaged, mediocre pupils rather than world‑class virtuosi. Flesch hails Joachim’s Concerto in the Hungarian Style and E‑minor Variations as works of genius that reveal an exceptional but under‑realized compositional talent, stifled by administrative and performing burdens, even as he praises Joachim’s cadenzas to concertos by Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, and Viotti as unmatched models. Flesch faults Joachim as a teacher and institutional leader for allowing second‑rate staff such as Moser, Wirth, and Hausmann to shape the Hochschule, which, he argues, helped cede international primacy from the German school to Franco‑Belgian and Russian violin traditions. He also sketches Joachim’s weak conducting, conservative aesthetic stance, and complex moral and personal character—including hostility to Wagner, jealousy of rivals like Kreisler, and unhappy domestic life—before concluding that, despite these shortcomings, Joachim remains a landmark in the history of violin playing and a central figure in redefining the virtuoso as an ethical interpreter rather than a mere showman.

Carl Flesch on Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim was born in 1831 at Kittsee in the Hungarian county of Wieselburg, about thirty kilometres from my own birth-place; he was the son of poor Jewish traders. So far as the external circumstances of his life are concerned, Andreas Moser’s biography^[1] offers us the most detailed information in every respect. It cannot be gainsaid, however, that Moser glorifies Joachim’s personality and art to the extent of utterly unobjective idolatry, whereas in reality, even this supreme figure showed certain unmistakable weaknesses.

In the course of his career, which spanned about sixty-six years, Joachim was active as a quartet leader,^[2] soloist, composer, teacher, conductor, and as head of the newly-established department for musical execution—Hochschule für ausübende Tonkunst—at the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin. I have here enumerated his activities in what I consider to be the order of their importance.

As a quartet player, he not only gave his best, but also conquered peaks never reached before or after. It was not the perfection of his execution to which he owed his lonely greatness, for Sarasate’s sensuous euphony, Wilhelmj’s powerful tone and Wieniawski’s fire were all superior to what Joachim had to offer in these respects; it was not beautiful sound as such that made his quartet playing a profound experience. Rather, it was the inner life of his performances, the nobility of his musical outlook and the imaginative freedom which marked his interpretations despite all due obedience to the written text. His playing was informed with an indefinable suggestive power to which every sensitive musician had to submit. In his last years, I sometimes heard him play out of tune, drily, and with insecure technique. Owing to the absence of any kind of vibrato, his tone had assumed a somewhat senile character, and his fingers had become gouty and stiff, so that semitones in the higher positions came critically close to whole tones. Nevertheless, one could not but be deeply impressed by his genius for shaping his phrases, by the somnambulistic certainty of his intuitions which always seemed to find the only true violinistic expression for the inner significance of the music. Unjustly, he used to be known as a ‘classical’ violinist in the slightly suspicious sense which the adjective had acquired in the course of time, and which always made one think of a kind of respectable dullness. In actual fact, he was a romantic through and through, uninhibited, even somewhat gipsy-like by nature, and he always retained these traits which, indeed, can still be heard in his Violin Concerto ‘in the Hungarian Style’, op. 11.

The Joachim Quartet, on the other hand, left a good deal to be desired as an ensemble. Robert Hausmann [1852–1909], the ’cellist, suffered from a variety of technical insufficiencies; and on the viola, Emanuel Wirth [1842–1923], known and feared as ‘the wrist player’ (der Handg’lenkler), was as dry as desert dust; while the otherwise outstanding violinist Karel Halíř [1859–1909] was not sufficiently flexible to adjust himself to Joachim’s tonal peculiarities. Altogether, the quartet consisted of a solo violin with three instruments accompanying—a style which is diametrically opposed to the aims of our own time’s quartet playing as first introduced by the Bohemian String Quartet. But then, the ‘regulars’ at these recitals only wanted to hear Joachim anyway; willy-nilly, the other players had to be accepted as part of the bargain. The leader’s personality would indeed have towered above even far greater instrumentalists than were his colleagues.

My opinion of Joachim as a soloist, on the other hand, can only be accepted with reservations: when I heard him for the first time, he had already reached the age of fifty-seven, whereas I was no older than thirteen! Nevertheless, the nobility of his cantilena, especially in the adagio of Spohr’s Second Violin Concerto and in the violin transcription of Schumann’s Gartemelodie, has remained an unforgettable experience for me. Like all great violinists, he had, in his earliest youth, concentrated on virtuoso tasks. In particular, he liked to play Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst’s ‘Othello’ Fantasy, which is almost completely forgotten nowadays, as well as that composer’s Violin Concerto in F sharp minor. But he soon turned to worthier tasks.

In the development of modern violin playing he has, as it were, intervened with his characteristic primacy of the spirit over technique; and in general musical history, he survives in the first place as a large-scale reformer of programme-making. We have to remember that this was the period of operatic fantasies, polonaises,^[3] elegies, mazurkas and so forth, of the tyranny of the salon piece, if we want to appreciate his courage in expecting his audiences to sit through the Bach Chaconne, the Violin Concertos of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, the Schumann Fantasy for violin and orchestra, and indeed even his own ‘Hungarian’ Concerto. He had to renounce all easy and cheap success, the acclaim of the broad masses. If, despite the enormous demands his programmes made on the average listener, Joachim’s stature was generally recognized from the outset of his career, this only proves that he had quickly succeeded in educating the public and raising its standards to his own. We owe it above all to him that the virtuoso for virtuosity’s sake came to be relegated to an inferior position, that the music itself was promoted to the first place. Stimulated by Joachim, Hans von Bülow, too, began to reshape his piano programmes in a similar way. Thus the primacy of the musical over the virtuoso element was established on a firm basis which, ever since, has proved unshakeable. Thanks to the high ethical ideals of Joachim’s art, the virtuoso developed, within a mere thirty years, from his early nineteenth-century position of an entertainer to that of an artist who wished to be primarily regarded as a mediator between the work and the listener.

As a violinist per se, we remember Joachim as a supremely outstanding figure although—owing to his over-numerous commitments in all possible spheres—he showed an unmistakable technical deterioration at a relatively early stage. We certainly believe the historians who tell us that in his early days he towered above all his rivals. But on the other hand we know that, for instance, the unjustly forgotten Ferdinand Laub [1832–75], of whom Joachim used to say that he played the ‘Hungarian’ Concerto better than the composer himself, was at least technically his equal; that Wilhelmj later surpassed him in both beauty of sound and racy virtuosity; and that the smooth technique, sweet tone and pure intonation of the Sarasate of the ’eighties ousted Joachim, purely as a violinist, from his leading position, though we must not forget that he more than compensated for his technical defects by his unique spiritual and musical superiority.

His tone as such could be described as rather cool; it needed inspiration from within before it stirred the listener, and was thus extremely dependent on his own mood. The outstandingly brilliant features of his technical equipment were an incredibly racy mordent, a pithily rhythmic ‘Spohr staccato’ (as distinct from the extremely rapid and stiff ‘Wieniawski staccato’)^[4] and extremely subtly differentiated ordinary and thrown spiccatos, which he very originally described as ‘rain’ and ‘hail’ respectively. Judging from the difficulties of his ‘Hungarian’ Concerto, moreover, his general double-stopping technique must also have been equal to the greatest demands in earlier years.

Joachim seems to have been prevented from regular practice by his travels, his quartet playing, teaching, administrative duties and social obligations. As a result, he showed from his fiftieth year onwards a high degree of nervousness when he had to cope with solo tasks, so that for example he very seldom achieved his full powers in the first movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto; only in the second movement did the greatness of his personality and skill fully manifest itself. As he grew older, moreover, his memory became strikingly unreliable, often forcing him to interrupt his performance. From his sixtieth year, therefore, he devoted himself almost exclusively to quartet playing and, despite his rather disturbing mechanical inhibitions, led the field there until his death, with a capacity for musical empathy that amounted to genius.

Finally, his bowing technique requires detailed discussion, not only because it came to determine the development of the German violin school from the middle of the nineteenth century, but also because it provides a transition to an appreciation of his activities as a teacher. Joachim played with the then usual lowered upper arm, which necessarily involved a right-angle relationship between the hand and the forearm at the nut. The bow was held by the fingertips, the index finger touched the stick at the line of the top joint, while the little finger remained on the stick even at the point, all this as a result of the unsatisfactory pronation of the forearm at the upper half of the bow. The change of bow at the nut was accomplished with stiff fingers by means of a combined movement, very difficult to describe, consisting of a horizontal jerk of the wrist and a slightly rotating movement of the forearm. In my opinion Joachim’s bowing was a purely personal affair, an intuitive motional translation of a thoroughly individual expressive need. The error started only when his followers and pupils attempted, on the basis of this personal and even physiologically defective style, to found a school whose principles claimed universal validity. Emanuel Wirth [1842–1923]^[5] and his colleagues made the purely horizontal wrist movement the key to bowing technique altogether. Since, however, this movement had nowise been provided for by nature, and hence was unnatural in the true sense of the word, it was not surprising that the majority of the students thus maltreated contracted arm troubles and, as violinists, became cripples for life. Of the smaller proportion of pupils who succeeded in surviving this torture, the majority turned into the type of Joachim pupil of mediocre quality well known in orchestras and conservatoires, while a minimal number of especially talented fiddlers succeeded in casting off the strait jacket into which they had been thrust, and developed to a higher stage. But in the forty years of his activity, Joachim never trained a single violinist who achieved world fame, though during the years when he was its director, the Berlin Hochschule formed a centre at which the world’s strongest talents assembled, providing him with the best possible material. People like Halíř, Hess, Petri,^[6] Eldering, Klingler, Berber, Gregorowitsch, Wietrovecz, Wittenberg, Havemann etc. were mostly talents of the first rank, who did not achieve full development only because from the beginning their technique had been thrust into a false path by this tragical wrist mania. Joachim himself is really innocent, for he never made any pretensions to be a teacher of basic principles. He was the ideal type of a training teacher, the playing teacher par excellence who influenced by his example, which, however, he was unable to analyse and explain purely rationally. Only those whose technical training was firmly established could profit by his teaching. His performances were distinguished by a poetic quality which, once one had experienced it, accompanied one all one’s life. Marsick and Hubay, for instance, were thus affected; and I, too, have been unable all my life to free myself from the memory of his interpretation of certain works. But here again lay the danger of a repression of the pupil’s individuality if, that is, he remained too long exposed to Joachim’s seductive influence. As teachers, towering individualities usually are vampires who suck out their pupils’ personality.

All in all Joachim achieved no very beneficial effects as a teacher. Possibly he could have made up for his lack of a pure teaching talent by enlisting outstanding preparatory teachers, who could have supplied him with pupils technically perfected and thus ready for his specific spiritual and musical influence. But as the head of an institution he seems to have been too easily swayed by the advice of others. There can be no other explanation for the circumstance that around 1900 such teachers as Hess, Petri, Eldering and Wendling were all employed in smaller institutes somewhere in Germany, while the education of the young generation in Berlin was entrusted to Wirth, Moser, Markees, and Exner. As a result, in the last seventy years the Franco-Belgian and the Russian schools have achieved an indubitable superiority over the German in world opinion.^[7] A similar state of affairs seems to have obtained in the other teaching departments: instead of Julius Klengel and Hugo Becker, Robert Hausmann^[8] was in charge of the ’cello class, while the training of singing pupils was entrusted to Frau Schulzen-Asten, though there was a Julius Stockhausen available. And the teachers of composition, Heinrich von Herzogenberg [1843–1900], Friedrich Kiel [1821–85], and Ernst F. K. Rudorff [1840–1916], took care to ensure that no draught from the new-German school should blow into the fusty atmosphere of epigonic mediocrity.

As a composer, too, Joachim was an exceptional talent. It is hardly astonishing that in view of his Concerto in the Hungarian Style, which is a work of genius, Brahms regarded him as more gifted than himself. This work marks a climax in our literature; it is the most outstanding creation that a violinist has ever written for his own instrument. The E minor Variations for violin and orchestra, too, though several degrees more conventional, still occupy an exceptional place in violin literature. But his activities in the concert hall and Hochschule soon crippled Joachim’s creative urge—to Brahms’s profound disappointment. Joachim the composer seems to us like a meteor whose magnitude we can only divine from the brilliant trail of the ‘Hungarian’ Concerto and the Variations.

If many consider Joachim too time-bound as a composer, we all must profoundly admire his cadenzas. That for the first movement of the Brahms Concerto is a masterpiece of which Brahms himself might have been proud, a paraphrase of the themes which has no equal in the relevant literature. The cadenzas for the Beethoven, Mozart and Viotti Concertos can likewise be regarded as models of their kind. Joachim’s editions, on the other hand, are open to criticism. At times he left far too many fingerings and bowings to discretion, as in the case of the Corelli and Beethoven Sonatas, which are hardly distinguishable from the original text. On the other hand, in the Violinschule bearing his name and in the Bach Sonatas he succumbed all too easily to the influence of his collaborator Andreas Moser; many of the fingerings and bowings bear the stamp of a personality theoretically well-versed, but practically inexperienced and reactionary; for Moser was really one of the weakest violinists who emerged from the Joachim school, and he hardly got a chance to acquaint himself personally with the pitfalls of playing in public. The unbiassed observer must therefore find that while we owe to Joachim epoch-making changes in the ethical and musical aspects of virtuosodom, he has not advanced its purely technical side. This latter task was reserved for others, for Jakob Dont [1815–88], Henry Schradieck [1846–1918], Émile Sauret [1852–1920], Otakar Ševčík [1852–1934], and perhaps also for myself.

Conducting was decidedly the weakest of Joachim’s musical talents. Like his friend Brahms, he was far too unshowy to express his personality by way of the baton.

In regard to his intellectual and moral character, too, Joachim was an exception among contemporary violinists, as his correspondence shows—notwithstanding his obstinate rejection of Wagner, his susceptibility to the influence of his inferiors and a somewhat jealous attitude towards other artists and schools.

Fritz Kreisler, for instance, had a sensational success when he made his début in Berlin in 1898. His name was on all lips. It was felt that with him a new era was beginning in the history of violin playing. Now one of Kreisler’s friends, a pupil of Joachim, invited him to visit Joachim’s class. Joachim received Kreisler with icy politeness, without indicating by a single word that he knew who the visitor was. As there was no accompanist present Kreisler offered to undertake this function, and carried it through with the phenomenal verve which had always distinguished his piano playing. At the end of the lesson Joachim took leave of the great violinist with the classic sentence: ‘You certainly are a ready pianist.’

Joachim was not happy in his marriage. He thought he had grounds for doubting the legitimacy of his youngest daughter. The divorce proceedings which he instituted were decided against him, since his wife, the famous singer Amalie Joachim, declared her fidelity to him on oath. Brahms never forgave him the public handling of this affair. When far advanced in his sixties Joachim fell passionately in love with the singer Melba; he even wanted to marry her. But Melba, according to reliable contemporary reports, did not take him seriously.

Joachim went on giving public performances until shortly before his death, at the age of seventy-six. He was, and will always remain, one of the greatest figures, a landmark in the history of our art.

^[1] Joseph Joachim: Ein Lebensbild, Berlin, 1898. Completed edition (2 vols.), 1907-10. English translation by L. Durham (1901).

^[2] Also, together with Ferdinand David, as orchestral leader at the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

^[3] In his History of Viennese Concert Life, Hanslick writes of this era that there was hardly a concert programme without one of Joseph Mayseder’s [1789-1863] popular Polonaises.

^[4] In his Art of Violin Playing (Vol. I, p. 69), Flesch observes that ‘neither Joachim nor Sarasate were masters of a normal staccato’, whose ‘importance with regard to technique as a whole should not be exaggerated’.

^[5] Viola player in the Joachim Quartet, where he succeeded Edward Rappoldi in 1877, the year when, also at Joachim’s request, he became professor for violin at the Berlin Hochschule. 

^[6] Henri Wilhelm, the father of Egon.

^[7] This was written in the early ’thirties.

^[8] From 1879 until Joachim’s death in 1907 he was a member of the Joachim Quartet (see p. 31).