Given how much music Max Bruch composed, and how unmemorable almost all his melodies are, the surprise is the degree of perfection in this gem of a concerto; one would not wish to change a note, nor cut a single bar of it. A couple of other works are lesser peaks in his oeuvre (Scottish Fantasy, Kol Nidrei), but otherwise nothing approaches the assured mastery in this glorious piece, despite his own personal exasperation when, inevitably, yet another soloist approached him for advice or even a run-through. In 1887 he wrote in desperation to his publisher Fritz Simrock: “I even get cross and tell them ‘I can't listen to this piece any more. Do you really think I’ve only written this one concerto? Go and play one of the others for a change; they’re just as good, maybe even better!’ “ – but this was wishful thinking. The fact is that he had made a crucial mistake: due to financial embarrassment at the time he had sold the work outright to the publisher Cranz, and for the rest of his life could only recoup paltry royalties from his other two, greatly inferior, concertos.

Yet this first one did not simply emerge as a unique, perfectly-formed miracle; it was the product of painstaking work, with much revision and refinement. There was even an entire original version (given at the first performance in 1866), after which Bruch consulted Joseph Joachim who made many improvements to the solo part, all of which the composer approved (unlike those additionally proposed by Ferdinand David later), and the many cuts and deletions in the autograph score attest to the degree of perfection towards which he was striving before finally he was prepared to submit the concerto for publication.

Textually the problem with this piece is that the missing links between the surviving manuscript sources and the published editions have not survived, so that evidence is lacking as to how far differences between them are the result of revisions or (on the other hand) errors. Nevertheless many discrepancies can be solved with some confidence.