Max Bruch's "Kol Nidrei" is one of his most famous compositions alongside the popular first violin concerto. The melancholic "Adagio after Hebrew melodies", intended for the cellist Robert Hausmann, was composed in 1880. He used two old Jewish songs whose extraordinary beauty provoked the Protestant Bruch, according to his own words, a deep emotion. The tenor timbre of the cello is the ideal medium to evoke the voice of a Jewish cantor, and this is how until today the "Kol Nidrei" provides all cellists with a marvelous model of what we called "sing to the instrument". With this edition, based on the first edition of 1881, "Kol Nidrei" is published for the first time in a scientifically based urtext edition, which is why we have, alongside musical sources, also attached many letters and numerous documents from the Max Bruch Archives. Christian Poltéra kindly took charge of the indications concerning the soloist part.
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