Bruch, Max. (1838–1920) [Joachim, Joseph. (1831–1907)]
Autograph Letter Signed to Joseph Joachim
ALS of the German composer and conductor to the Hungarian violinist in Berlin. Dated Friedenau [now Berlin], February 25, 1897. In German. 1 p. (postcard). In full, translated: "Dear Joachim, a young, highly talented Belgian violinist, Mlle. Sylva from Brussels, whom I heard play on the Rhine in the summer, has sent me an inquiry that I cannot answer without having consulted you first. If it is convenient for you, I will visit you on Saturday morning around 9:45. If you have to leave before that hour, please send me a word. Cordially yours, M. Bruch."The violinist mentioned here was known as Nadia Sylva. Born Edith Smith, she was the sister of the much better known mezzo-soprano Marguerite Sylva (1875–1957), whose birth name was Marguerite Alice Hélène Smith. The two sisters were educated at the Brussels conservatory. It appears that Nadia Sylva considered further studies at the Berlin Musikakademie, where both Bruch and Joachim taught at the time.
According to Marguerite Sylva's entry in the 1935 edition of American Women, it was W. S. Gilbert who gave the sisters their stage names. In early 1896 they were in London, where Edith was to play her violin for Gilbert, with Marguerite providing the piano accompaniment. Sylva recalled that after Edith finished playing, Gilbert asked her, "Don't you do anything?". She told him she "sang a little" and proceeded to sing the Habanera from Carmen to him. He offered her a part in his upcoming production of The Grand Duke; she declined (https://alchetron.com/Marguerite-Sylva).
At the celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday in June 1906, Joseph Joachim said: “The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, the most uncompromising, is Beethoven’s. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.” Joachim spoke from a position of singular authority. Not only had he performed Beethoven’s Concerto since just before his thirteenth birthday, but it was his advocacy that had turned it from an obscure and problematic work by a famous composer into the summit and cynosure of the concerto repertory. He had helped Brahms crucially with his concerto (many of the notes in the solo part are actually Joachim’s), he had been the first to play it, and he wrote a cadenza for it that has all but become a canonical part of the text. As a boy, he had been Mendelssohn’s protégé; his teacher was Ferdinand David, who had been to Mendelssohn what Joachim was to Brahms; and he had played the famous concerto more than two hundred times, going back to 1846 when the composer himself conducted. He had also worked with Bruch on the revisions that gave the G minor Concerto its final form, the one in which it became seductive and popular, and he had given the premiere of that definitive edition in Bremen on January 7, 1868. (22889)
Autograph Letter Classical Music