Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T20:57:17.492Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Busch the Teacher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2024

Get access

Summary

Busch was too busy to be a pedagogue in the mould of Leopold Auer, Carl Flesch, Ivan Galamian or D. C. Dounis, and he resigned his masterclass at the Berlin Hochschule too soon to make his mark there. Only Dea Gombrich and Blanche Honegger were long-term pupils but he gave lessons to such violinists as Helen Airoff, Gosta Andreasson, Georg Beerwald, Frances Brockman, Alphonse Brun, Hermann Diener, Ernest Drucker, Stefan Frenkel, Arlie Furman, Stefi Geyer, Frederick Grinke, Gerhard Kander, Otto Kirchenmaier, Willy Kleemann, Elisheva Kramer, Dolores Maass, Frances Magnes, Yehudi Menuhin, Erica Morini, David Nadien, Bjorn Olafsson, Anna Radnitz, Ulrich Strauss and Charles Treger. Flesch thought that Busch ‘must be considered more of a suggestive influence than a real teacher’; and Boris Schwarz wrote:

Busch was not a teacher in the accepted sense of the word; one could take him as a model, but he himself could not develop a tender talent.

Grinke, who had lessons from Busch and Flesch, was left with strongly contrasting impressions:

Flesch was like a doctor – if something was not right with your technique, he would give you a pill; and if that didn't work, next time he would give you another pill. I would get inspired sometimes by a performance by Flesch, because of something in the way he played it. With Busch it was something in the spirit of his performances that thrilled me. He talked about projecting the music – he did not talk much about technique.

Joseph Segal moved in his mid-teens straight from one of these masters to the other:

After three years of Flesch, it was quite a relief to go to Busch, as Flesch had concert-like lessons – there was no privacy. Class teaching is all right within reason, but with Busch it was more human. He was a marvellous man in his own way, a very straightforward kind of individual, though he did not do all that much different from what Flesch did. He had certain opinions about Flesch's teaching, but in the meantime Flesch had changed his mind! I thought Busch was extraordinarily good on the musical level.

Type
Chapter
Information
Adolf Busch
The Life of an Honest Musician
, pp. 997 - 1014
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×