Ignaz Brüll: Melodie in a minor, Op.53/2

First published 1886.
Brüll (1846-1907) was a Moravian-born pianist and composer who lived and worked in Vienna.

His operatic compositions included Das goldene Kreuz (The Golden Cross), which became a repertory work for several decades after its first production in 1875, but eventually fell into neglect after being banned by the Nazis because of Brüll's Jewish origins. He also wrote a small corpus of finely crafted works for the concert hall and recitals. Brüll's compositional style was lively but unabashedly conservative, in the vein of Mendelssohn and Schumann.

Brüll was also highly regarded as a sensitive concert pianist. Johannes Brahms regularly wanted Brüll to be his partner in private performances of four-hand piano duet arrangements of his latest works. Indeed, Brüll was a prominent member of Brahms's circle of musical and literary friends, many of whom he and his wife frequently entertained.

2 years after these pieces were published, in 1882, Brüll married Marie Schosberg, a banker's daughter who became a popular hostess to Viennese musical and artistic society. Brüll now shifted his attention towards composition, reduced the number of concert engagements, and permanently gave up touring. He also found himself playing host to Johannes Brahms's circle of friends, including the powerful music critic Eduard Hanslick, the musically minded eminent surgeon Theodor Billroth, and composers such as Carl Goldmark, Robert Fuchs, and even Gustav Mahler.
When Brahms wanted to audition his latest orchestral compositions, as was his habit, to a select group of connoisseurs in four-handed versions for two pianos, Brüll regularly played alongside the senior composer. From 1890, Brüll's new holiday home (the Berghof) in Unterach am Attersee also became a social venue.

Unlike Brahms, Brüll was a man of the theatre, and he went on to compose at least seven more operas, which however did not approach the same level of popular success as Das goldene Kreuz. His final opera, the two-act comedy Der Hussar, was well received when it was staged in Vienna in 1898.

I played a mazurka of him
   • Ignaz Brüll: Mazurka, Op.38/5  

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