Booklet

1912 he played it under Reger’s direction in Pforzheim, with the touring Meiningen Court Orchestra.
His fiancée Frieda Grüters wrote home: ‘Reger told me Adolf is taking the place of Joachim; he has never
heard the Concerto played in such a way.’ On 28 October 1912 Busch gave his first London rendering of
the Concerto, with the LSO under Steinbach, again to acclaim; and from then on he was recognised as the
work’s finest exponent. Early in 1913, as the new leader of the Konzertverein Orchestra (and its quartet),
he mesmerised the Viennese audience and conductor Walter with his solo in the ‘Benedictus’ of the Missa
solemnis. During the Great War, from his base in Vienna, Busch continued to tour the countries open to
him and consolidated his reputation in central Europe as soloist and quartet leader. When peace came he
was called to Joachim’s old teaching post in Berlin and became the busiest musician of his eminence in the
world, giving a concert almost every night. One evening it might be a concerto, the next a quartet recital,
the next a sonata programme with his partner Rudolf Serkin. He used his earnings as a soloist to subsidise
his chamber music and put on a dazzling array of repertoire in his recitals – duos, trios, quartets, quintets,
sextets, septets, octets. He was a pioneer of the chamber orchestra revival, experimenting with pick-up
groups as early as 1916, although not until 1935 did he lead the regular ensemble of friends and pupils
with which he performed and recorded Bach and Mozart. His summers were spent in relaxation – walking
and climbing were favourite pastimes – and in composition. When the crisis of 1933 came, he was on the
books of three publishers, Simrock, Breitkopf und Härtel and Eulenburg.
As early as 1927, seeing how things were going politically in Germany, Adolf and Frieda Busch moved
to Basel with their little daughter Irene and Serkin, who though only 12 years younger was like a son to
them (he later married Irene). When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Busch was affronted by the insults
and injustices meted out to the Jews. After experiencing anti-Semitic demonstrations against Serkin and
the boycott of Jewish shops in Berlin on 1 April, he called it a day. He would not return to Germany, even as
a visitor, for another 16 years. At a stroke he halved his income, said farewell to real success as a composer
and lost his most appreciative audiences. In 1938 he boycotted Italy, where he was hugely popular, for
similar reasons. The move to the United States, where being a Herr Professor Doktor counted for nothing
and there was anti-German feeling – due not just to the war but to the stranglehold an earlier generation
of Austro-German musicians had exerted on American music – was traumatic for him. Little interest was
shown in him as a soloist and he ended up touring the country with a conductorless chamber orchestra,
similar to the one he had led in Europe. Even here he was a pioneer, performing Schütz, Gabrieli, Purcell,
Corelli and Rameau alongside his beloved Bach and Mozart. His performances and recordings of Handel’s
Concerti grossi were among his finest achievements. In 1950 he helped to found the Marlboro summer
school in Vermont, which still flourishes. He died at nearby Guilford on 9 June 1952.
The saga of efforts to record Adolf Busch in the Beethoven Concerto was frustrating. By the late 1920s
HMV and Columbia were vying for a recording: the former suggested using the Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra
under Volkmar Andreae, then in the spring of 1930 actually booked the LSO, but Busch’s agents (prompted
by his wife) objected to his being put on the cheaper plum label when his pupil Yehudi Menuhin was on
the red label. Busch’s boycott of Germany from 1933 removed one of the main markets for a recording and
so the situation arose where the Beethoven Concerto was available from German fiddlers such as Georg
Kulenkampff, Max Strub and Riele Queling but not from the master. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1939,
Busch was ignored by RCA Victor, who had a reciprocal arrangement with his European label HMV; but
he was courted by Columbia and once he was over a 1940 heart attack, he began recording with Serkin
and his quartet. Early in 1942, Fritz Busch conducted the New York Philharmonic-Symphony in a series
of concerts for the orchestra’s centennial season at Carnegie Hall, and Adolf was soloist in four. On 29
and 30 January he introduced New Yorkers to the Reger Concerto, in his own manuscript reworking, but
most critics rejected it. On 7 and 8 February the Busch brothers again collaborated with the Philharmonic-
Symphony, in the Beethoven Concerto, Adolf airing a new set of cadenzas written the previous year. The
Sunday-afternoon CBS network broadcast was taken down by two home recordists and one of those
documents has been released. It is an admirable corrective to the official Columbia recording, made
next day at Liederkranz Hall. Unfortunately the production was delegated to the inexperienced Goddard
Lieberson. Busch was palpably under strain in the opening movement, his nervousness exacerbated by
Lieberson’s insisting he stand on a raised platform, which made him feel remote from his brother and the
orchestra and brought him too close to the microphone. The resulting poor balance caused him to reject
the recording, which was not issued until after his death. Had it been released at the time, it would have
enhanced his reputation, as despite its faults it is one of the great readings of the Concerto.
The frustration continued when, on 17 March 1949, Busch played the Concerto at the Radiohusets
Koncertsal, Copenhagen, with the Danish State Radio Symphony Orchestra under Launy Grøndahl.
The violinist was in terrific form, his big golden tone shining forth, and the orchestral musicians – with
whom he was well acquainted from many visits to the Danish capital – gave him wholehearted support,
as did their fine conductor. Sadly, Danish State Radio had not yet acquired tape recording facilities; and
only one turntable was in operation for taking the performance down on discs: thus every time a disc
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