Joseph Joachim (1831-1907)

Violin Concerto No.3 in G major • Overture 'Hamlet', Op. 4

Overture 'In Memoriam Heinrich von Kleist', Op. 13

The violinist Joseph Joachim has a secure place in the history of violin playing and in the wider history of music, as a result of his close association with Brahms and his clear influence on the latter's writing for the violin and on his techniques of orchestration.

Joachim was born in 1831 in Kittsee (now Köpscény) near Pressburg, the old Hungarian Coronation town (the modern Bratislava), the seventh of eight children born to Jewish parents Julius and Fanny Joachim. With the encouragement of his parents, he started to learn the violin at the age of five, studying with Serwaeczyéski in Pest, to where the family had moved in 1835. In 1839 Joseph played in public, with his teacher, the double concerto by the Mannheim violinist Eck, and in the same year was sent to Vienna to study w