Joseph Braunstein Collection

Joseph Braunstein, affectionately known as Sassobruno (Italian for brown stone), was born on February 9, 1892 in Vienna, Austria. He began his study of the violin as a child, and became an avid chamber music player as a teenager. He went on to study under the auspices of Guido Adler and Arnold Schonberg at the University of Vienna, but WWI interrupted his studies. After serving in the military from 1915-1918, he returned to his academic pursuits and received his doctorate in Music and History from Vienna University in 1920. From 1919 to 1925, Braunstein performed as a violinist and violist in several orchestras, among them the Vienna Symphony-Orchestra and the Staatsoper, where he had the honor of working with famous conductors such as Richard Strauss, Felix Weingarten, Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwangler and Otto Klemperer.

Braunstein was also a prolific author and published several monographs as well as hundreds of articles in newspapers, magazines. From 1928-1938 he wrote for the official "Radio-Wien" and lectured extensively. He has supplied record liner notes for Vox, Vanguard, RCA, Book of the Month Club, Decca Records, and was the program note annotator for inter alia the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

In addition to his love of music, Braunstein was an avid mountaineer and loved the Alpine regions of his native Austria. In fact, he was never able to attend performances at Bayreuth because of scheduling conflicts with his mountaineering expeditions. He climbed over 60 peaks in Europe above the 13,000 feet elevation mark, among them Mount Blanc and Matterhorn. He also published articles on mountaineering in Alpine Club magazines, such as the Oesterreichische Bergzeitung, and contributed to the Der Grosse Brockhaus encyclopedia's entry on Alpinismus.

In 1940 Mr. Braunstein fled the Nazis with his wife Emma (nee Gross). Their first stop was Italy, from whence they continued on to New York, were they settled in 1940. Joseph became the reference librarian at the music division of the New York Public Library, and in the 1950s he began teaching music history at Julliard School, the Mannes School for Music, and the Manhattan School of Music. In 1961 he began a 20-year association with Frederic Waldman, the founder of the chamber orchestra Musica Aeterna, assembling programs that often included rarely heard works. His wife Emma, who suffered from Multiple Sclerosis, died in 1966.

Braunstein passed away in 1996 at the age of 104.