And soon you'll be able to the live perf. from the day before, in good
sound, to be released for the first time on Music & Arts CD-1183 in March
2006... Tully Potter writes about this recent find in his liner notes:
"
During January and February 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. He had thought of
playing the Brahms Concerto but it was allotted to Heifetz; and so on 29 and
30 January he introduced New Yorkers to the Reger Concerto, in his own
manuscript reworking, 'something that is very dear to my heart', as he put
it to Fritz. To hear the Busch brothers perform the Reger Concerto, many
people today would walk as far as Bach did to hear Buxtehude, but the New
York critics knew better: Olin Downes complained of 'the grossness, the
complacency, the tedium and the execrable taste of this concerto',
describing it as 'beer and sausage in unlimited proportions', and Oscar
Thompson, who condescendingly referred to the brothers as 'the two sturdy
lads from Westphalia', found it 'an indifferently dull concerto'. By
contrast Robert Sabin, editor of Musical America, said that the performance
he heard was among the most memorable musical experiences of his life; and
even the critics had to report that soloist and conductor were heartily
applauded and called back several times.
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. Fortunately Downes - who had written of
a 1939 Busch performance of the Beethoven with Barbirolli that 'there is no
denying that there are longueurs in this concerto' - was not present but the
Saturday-evening interpretation gained mixed notices, the best being very
good, the worst very bad; and perhaps the violinist was not at his best. Two
critics indicated that he seemed nervous - hardly surprising, when it was
his first performance for years of a work he had been accustomed to play
almost every week. He was certainly in excellent form on the Sunday
afternoon: the CBS network broadcast was taken down by at least two home
recordists and one of those documents is here released for the first time.
It makes an admirable corrective to the official Columbia recording, made
next day at Liederkranz Hall. Unfortunately the production was delegated to
the talented but 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 and it was not
issued until after his death.
The live performance is everything one might expect. Fritz Busch's opening
tutti is a model, flexible without changing tempo all the time (Walter),
classical without holding the music in a straitjacket (Toscanini) or
over-accenting (Solti). As the Allegro ma non troppo develops, we hear how a
great classical conductor can hold things together firmly and positively,
yet unobtrusively. Adolf's account of the solo part is altogether more
assured than in the studio, beginning with the broken octaves at his first
entry. There is no obvious point-making in the first movement, even in the G
minor episode, but Busch has a way of getting under the skin of the music
without having to 'do' much. The performance seems to go more quickly than
in the studio, yet the timings for all three movements are virtually
identical in both performances (great musicians do not change their tempi
overnight). The Larghetto, which for many players is no more than an
intermezzo, is the heart of the Busch interpretation. Beethoven's
instruction 'dolce' brings rapt concentration, rather than mere sweetness,
and in the passage marked to be played on the two lower strings - where
Leonid Kogan and Yehudi Menuhin were always at their best - Busch seems to
move into another world. The finale, in which the Busch brothers create
something more substantial than usual, without compromising Beethoven's
bucolic frolic, has some delightfully spontaneous touches. How fortunate
that both this performance and the Brahms are supported by such an excellent
orchestra as the NYPSO.
By further good fortune, in that same month of February 1942 Busch recorded
both Beethoven Romances for the WOR radio station in New York. The orchestra
was the station's own and the conductor was the WOR director of music, the
former cellist Alfred Wallenstein. Although these pieces are not the equal
of the Larghetto in the Concerto, they are very pleasing in the hands of a
master. Busch used to play them a good deal before the war - one or other of
them would often be included in his marathon concerto programmes - and he
certainly had the measure of them. His interpretations are admirable
examples of his wonderful rhythmic control in slower music, and his tone is
here heard at its best.
For Hans von Bülow and later German musicians, the 'three Bs' were Bach,
Beethoven and Brahms. All three were meat and drink to Busch, who was one of
the great Bach players of his time. In the early 1930s HMV wanted to record
him in the D minor Double Concerto with Menuhin; but he refused to take
part in what he saw as a publicity stunt and the recording was offered
instead to Menuhin's other teacher George Enescu, who proved more
accommodating. In the fullness of time Busch did record the Double Concerto
(partnered by his pupil Frances Magnes) and the E major Concerto for
American Columbia with his Chamber Players; but for some reason he did not
get round to the A minor. So it is serendipitous that this live performance,
in excellent sound, has survived from a broadcast of one of the Chamber
Players' regular subscription concerts in Town Hall, New York. The outer
movements display some of Busch's characteristic staccato but the heart of
the interpretation is the slow movement, in which his famous long, slow bow
strokes are in evidence - he could hold a single bow longer than any of his
contemporaries. The continuo piano here is played by one of his protégés,
Lukas Foss, who as 14-year-old Lukas Fuchs spent some days at the Busch
family home in Basel in the summer of 1937. Later, as fellow immigrants, the
two met up again in America."
©2006 Tully Potter
Tray card:
Adolf Busch plays Bach and Beethoven in wartime New York:
Previously unreleased public performance recordings
01. Bach - Violin Concerto in a minor, BWV 1041 - I. Allegro
04:02
02. ~ II. Andante
07:57
03. ~ III. Allegro assai
04:04
Adolf Busch, Busch Chamber Players, Lukas Foss, continuo
Town Hall (NY) March 26, 1943
04. Beethoven - Violin Concerto In D Major,Op.62 - I. Allegro ma non troppo
21:44
05. ~ II. Larghetto
09:38
06. ~ III. Rondo (Allegro)
09:20
Adolf Busch, New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra,
cond. Fritz Busch, Carnegie Hall (NY) Feb 8, 1942
07. Beethoven - Romance No. 1 In G Major, Op. 40
06:21
08. Beethoven - Romance No. 2 in F Major, Op. 50
07:57
WOR radio orchestra, cond. A. Wallenstein
"America Preferred" program (War Bond benefit) (NY), Feb 21, 1942
Total
1:11:03
Sound restoration: Ed Wilkinson
Note: Tully Potter
...
Post by Mark Obert-ThornThis was recently reissued on Biddulph 80211-2. The opening there is
not patched in from some other performance as it is on some other CD
issues.
Mark Obert-Thorn