Joseph Joachim (28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin.

After years of teaching at the Leipzig Conservatory and playing as principal violinist of the Gewandhausorchester, he moved to Weimar in 1848, where Franz Liszt established cultural life.

Joachim quit service in Hanover in 1865, and the family moved to Berlin, where he was entrusted with founding and directing a new department at the Royal Conservatory, for performing music.

In 1839, Joachim continued his studies at the Vienna Conservatory (briefly with Miska Hauser and Georg Hellmesberger, Sr.;[8] finally – and most significantly – with Joseph Böhm,[9] who introduced him to the world of chamber music).

[13] In the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Robert Schumann was highly enthusiastic about Felix Mendelssohn, on which Moser writes "Only in Haydn's admiration for Mozart does the history of music know a parallel case of such ungrudging veneration of one great artist for his equal.

On 27 May 1844 Joachim, not quite 13, in his London debut with Mendelssohn conducting at a concert of the Philharmonic Society, played the solo part in Beethoven's Violin Concerto.

[16] The Philharmonic had a policy against performers so young, but an exception was made after auditions persuaded gatherings of distinguished musicians and music lovers that Joachim had mature capabilities.

The audience anticipated great things, having got word from the rehearsal,[17] and so, Mendelssohn wrote, "frenetic applause began" as soon as Joachim stepped in front of the orchestra.

A third reviewer, for the 'Morning Post', wrote that the concerto "has been generally regarded by violin-players as not a proper and effective development of the powers of their instrument" but that Joachim's performance "is beyond all praise, and defies all description" and "was altogether unprecedented."

Moser (p. 29) further writes that "at the time of Beethoven's death", such people as Spohr and Hauptmann did not necessarily esteem the late quartets above the earliest ones.

[19] At the age of 18, "in the whole of Germany" Joachim had no equal, either in the rendering of Bach or in the concertos of Beethoven and Mendelssohn; while as quartet player, "he had no cause to fear rivalry.

In 1852 he moved to Hanover, at the same time dissociating himself from the musical ideals of the 'New German School' (Liszt, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, and their followers, as defined by journalist Franz Brendel).

"[23] Joachim's break with Liszt became final in August 1857, when he wrote to his former mentor: "I am completely out of sympathy with your music; it contradicts everything which from early youth I have taken as mental nourishment from the spirit of our great masters.

"[25] King Georg of Hanover was totally blind and very fond of music; he paid Joachim a good salary and gave him considerable freedom.

[26] Joachim's duties in Hanover included playing the main violin part in opera performances and that or conducting state concerts.

[32] Joachim met the then publicly unknown 20-year-old Brahms, and wrote of him that his playing "shows the intense fire...which predicts the artist" and "his compositions already betoken such power as I have seen in no other musician of his age".

After Robert's mental breakdown in 1854 and death in 1856, Joachim, Clara, and Brahms remained lifelong friends and shared musical views.

George Bernard Shaw wrote that the Popular Concerts had helped greatly to spread and enlighten musical taste in England.

"[49] In January 1867 there had been a tour to Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland, by Joachim, Clara, her oldest daughter Marie, Ries, Zerbini, Piatti, two English sisters "Miss Pyne," one a singer, and a Mr. Saunders who managed all the arrangements.

Marie Schumann wrote home from Manchester that in Edinburgh Clara "was received with tempestuous applause and had to give an encore, so had Joachim.

In 1860 Brahms and Joachim jointly wrote a manifesto against the "progressive" music of the 'New German' School, in reaction to the polemics of Brendel's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.

This manifesto, a volley in the War of the Romantics, had originally few (four[15]) signers (more later) and met with a mixed reception, being heavily derided by followers of Wagner.

In 1865 Joachim quit the service of the King of Hanover in protest, when the Intendant (artistic director) of the Opera refused to advance one of the orchestral players (Jakob Grün) because of the latter's Jewish birth.

It was a glorious occasion, after which about 100 of the composer's friends, the Joachims, Clara Schumann, Albert Dietrich and his wife, Max Bruch, and others gathered at the Bremen Rathskeller.

Later members of the Quartet were Johann Kruse (1892–1897) followed by Karel Halíř (2nd violin) from 1897 on; Emanuel Wirth (viola) from 1877 on (occasionally replaced by Karl Klingler); and Robert Hausmann (cello), from 1879 on.

But in April, two years later, Joachim was to lose forever this revered friend, as Johannes Brahms died at the age of 64 at Vienna.

[57] Near the 50th anniversary of Joachim's debut recital, he was honored by "friends and admirers in England"[58] on 16 April 1889 who presented him with "an exceptionally fine" violin made in 1715 by Antonio Stradivari, called "Il Cremonese".

[62] In Berlin, on 17 August 1903, Joachim recorded five sides for The Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd (G&T), which remain a fascinating and valuable source of information about 19th-century styles of violin playing.

A portrait of Joachim was painted by John Singer Sargent[63] and presented to him at the 1904 "Diamond Jubilee" celebration of his sixtieth anniversary of his first appearance in London.

The English poet Robert Bridges wrote a sonnet about Joachim in his first major work of poetry The Growth of Love.