The two pillars of Adolf Busch's musical faith were Bach and Mozart: he never lost an opportunity to express his reverence for them. He identified closely with Beethoven – as with Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Dvořak, Reger and Busoni – but his feeling for these composers was almost instinctive, a product of his background and training, whereas Bach and Mozart satisfied him on all levels, from the intuitive to the intellectual. ‘With Mozart and Bach there is no bad writing, only beautiful and more beautiful’, he said, ‘but with Beethoven there are some weak things.’ He knew virtually every work of his preferred composers and performed many of them as concertmaster, soloist, chamber musician or orchestra director. Bach was a favourite for home music-making and any work which could be adapted to the violin would be taken down off the shelf – Adolf Spemann recalled going through the Flute Sonatas with his namesake; and Dea Gombrich said: ‘Busch loved to play the Organ Sonatas on two violins and I often played them with him. Serkin or my mother would be at the piano and perhaps someone would play the cello’. As for Mozart, Busch singled out the B minor Adagio for piano, k540, and the Adagio introduction to the Rondo of the G minor String Quintet, k516, as the composer's most beautiful creations, adding: ‘I wish I had known Mozart, so that I could have told him I understood him’. After he and Serkin had spent a morning playing Mozart to Otto Gruters, Busch said: ‘Mozart is altogether the most cunning swine that ever existed; he knew more than the Lord God knew’. Later he added: ‘After Bach, Mozart knew the most about counterpoint’. And again: ‘At the beginning of the Armed Men I always come over all cold’. Yet when it came to public performances or recordings, he knew his own strengths, as Robert Dressler attested: