Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T20:52:48.105Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Busch as Interpreter: Comments on his Performances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2024

Get access

Summary

The musicianship of Adolf Busch was founded on a wealth of knowledge virtually unrivalled among performers of his era. His limitations of repertoire, such as they were, could be put down to choice rather than ignorance; and in his chosen field his erudition ran deep. His brother Fritz constantly sought his counsel on bowings and even tempi: when Adolf advised on a tempo for part of the final quartet in Act 2 of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which seemed wrong in the Breitkopf edition, the first printing (by Andre) bore him out. With Toscanini he argued about a Beethoven piano sonata, only to be proved right; and a dispute over a Mozart quartet ended with ‘Tosca’ expostulating: ‘Only Mozart can decide that’. Busch investigated the autograph, discovered he was correct and copied the relevant passage on to a postcard, sending it to the Maestro with the legend: ‘Mozart has decided’. Hedwig Busch recalled her husband routing a critic who had objected to a detail in a Busch-Serkin performance of a Mozart sonata: ‘Adolf had looked at the manuscript’. The musicologist Frederick Dorian wrote:

Anyone who heard and saw Adolf Busch play chamber music experienced an unforgettable event. He endowed performances of masterworks with striking interpretative empathy. Whether he played a sonata with Rudolf Serkin, a quartet with his own ensemble or a solo partita, the interpretations lived, before all, through an authenticity of style of which he was a faithful guardian. These memorable performances were guided by the principle of historic correctness. The notation of old scores, such as those of the Baroque and early Classicism, lacks instructions of a kind that is taken for granted in scores of later periods (for example, indications of the tempo). Furthermore, the graphic signs and symbols of notescript, in general, cannot express the intangibles of performance. Only the searching imagination of the intuitive interpreter can find the indispensable answers to the multiple problems that must be solved in the performance. Adolf Busch combined an incomparable performing practice, acquired since his early youth, with the accumulated knowledge of a profound scholar. His virtuosity as a violinist was controlled by a style-conscious, iron discipline.

Type
Chapter
Information
Adolf Busch
The Life of an Honest Musician
, pp. 949 - 996
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
×