Who was Ferdinand Hiller, and what does he have to do with the most famous setting of “Kol Nidre” in all of classical music?

Hiller, born to Jewish parents in 1811 (his father changed his name from Hildesheim), was a child prodigy. By 10, he was playing Mozart piano concertos in public, and by 12, he completed his first original composition. As a child, he met Felix Mendelssohn, who was two years his senior. Their friendship deepened in their teens and endured for over 20 years. Eventually, Hiller succeeded Mendelssohn as director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which likely precipitated a rapid cooling between them. Within four years, Mendelssohn was dead at the age of 38.

Hiller, who nearly doubled his friend’s lifespan (he died in 1885), composed in all forms – opera, symphony, concerto, chamber and instrumental works, and choral music, including an oratorio, “The Destruction of Jerusalem.” An outstanding pianist, he became the dedicatee of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto. Chopin also dedicated his three Nocturnes, Op. 15, to him.

Hiller was a forceful writer on music and an influential teacher. His star pupil was Max Bruch, who was not Jewish. Bruch became acquainted with the cantorial chant “Kol Nidre” after being introduced by Hiller to the Berlin hazzan, Abraham Lichtenstein. In 1880, the same year that Bruch composed his “Scottish Fantasy” for the violinist Pablo de Sarasate, he embarked on his famous cello elegy.

“Even though I am a Protestant, as an artist I deeply felt the outstanding beauty of these melodies,” Bruch wrote in 1889. He uses the plural because the second section of the work is a treatment of a setting by Isaac Nathan of Lord Byron’s “Oh! Weep for those that wept by Babel’s stream.”

“Kol Nidre” – the traditional prayer, not the cello work – opens the evening service on Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, begins tonight at sunset.

Bruch, “Kol Nidrei”

Nathan’s setting of Byron, which supplies the work’s B-section.

Selections from Hiller’s neglected oratorio, “The Destruction of Jerusalem”

His once popular Piano Concerto No. 2

An absorbing article on the power, influence, and universality of “Kol Nidre”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-the-haunting-kol-nidre-melody-harnessed-the-power-to-convert/

IMAGES (counterclockwise from top): “Kol Nidre” by Wilhelm Wachtel; Ferdinand Hiller; Janos Starker’s classic recording of “Kol Nidrei;” and its composer, Max Bruch