Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim (Hungarian: Joachim József, 28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.

Joseph Joachim was born in Köpcsény, Moson County, Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Kittsee/Kopčany in Burgenland, Austria). He was the seventh of eight children born to Julius, a wool merchant, and Fanny Joachim, who were of Hungarian Jewish origin. His infancy was spent as a member of the Kittsee Kehilla (Jewish community), one of Hungary's prominent Siebengemeinden ('Seven Communities') under the protectorate of the Esterházy family. He was a first cousin of Fanny Wittgenstein, née Figdor, the mother of Karl Wittgenstein and the grandmother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the pianist Paul Wittgenstein.

In 1833 his family moved to Pest, which in 1873 was united with Óbuda to form Budapest. There from 1836 (age 5) he studied violin with Stanisław Serwaczyński, the concertmaster of the opera in Pest, said to be the best violinist in Pest. Although Joachim's parents were "not particularly well off", they had been well advised to choose not just an "ordinary" violin teacher. Joachim's first public performance was 17 March 1839 when he was of age 8. (Serwaczyński later moved back to Lublin, Poland, where he taught Wieniawski.) In 1839, Joachim continued his studies at the Vienna Conservatory (briefly with Miska Hauser and Georg Hellmesberger, Sr.; finally – and most significantly – with Joseph Böhm, who introduced him to the world of chamber music). He was taken by his cousin, Fanny Figdor, who later married "a Leipzig merchant" named Wittgenstein, to live and study in Leipzig, where he became a protégé of Felix Mendelssohn, who arranged for him to study theory and composition with Moritz Hauptmann at the Leipzig Conservatory. In his début performance in the Leipzig Gewandhaus he played the Otello Fantasy by Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst.

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