Busch Quartet

The ensemble began rehearsals on 1 July and made a quiet début on 21 October in the Rittersaal at Düsseldorf, with further appearances that year in Cologne, Bonn, Breslau and Frankfurt.

By the next season, when they gave their first of many Beethoven cycles - beginning with one in the composer's birthplace, Bonn - Reitz and Bohnke had dropped out and the inner parts were being played by Busch's Swedish pupil Gösta Andreasson and the stop-gap violist Ernst Groell.

They were particularly successful in Italy, where they toured at least once a year, playing Schubert for Eleonora Duse, Dvořák for Maxim Gorky and Beethoven for Arturo Toscanini; they even gave a command performance for Pope Pius XI.

Soon the Busch Quartet became virtually a London institution, its recitals frequented by the likes of Samuel Beckett, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Victor Gollancz and Michael Tippett.

Two weeks later they were off on a brief American tour, making their U.S. debut in the Coolidge Chamber Music Festival at the Library of Congress, and on their return Andreasson and Herman Busch also moved to Basel.

In Vienna they had been the de facto resident ensemble at the Konzerthaus since 1919, giving regular recitals in the medium-sized room now known as the Mozartsaal, but following the rise of Nazism in that city they quietly withdrew after 1935.

They led the string sections in the elite orchestra at the Lucerne Festivals of 1938 and 1939 and in the latter year travelled to America, giving four recitals - each including a late Beethoven quartet - in the chamber music room of Carnegie Hall.

After several setbacks they were reunited in New York in June 1940, but Busch's heart attack later that year forced his colleagues to take orchestral and teaching jobs.

They resumed concerts and recordings in 1941 and had further successes in both spheres, before Andreasson's teaching commitments and the illnesses of both Doktor and Frieda Busch caused the ensemble to lapse in 1944.

In 1947, despite Busch's ill health, they made a triumphant tour of Britain and renewed acquaintance with Switzerland and Italy, before visiting Iceland.

Drucker had to leave the Quartet that summer for family reasons, but by the end of the year they had replaced him with Bruno Straumann and were able to give a concert with Busch's son-in-law Rudolf Serkin in New York.

Their last Beethoven cycles followed in April and May 1951 in Italy and England, and they finished their career as they had started it 38 years earlier: a private reading of a Haydn quartet, this time at the home of English friends.

A reflection of an earlier musical style was the Busch players' use of portamento, although they were perhaps somewhat less liberal in its application than the Rosé, Bohemian or Léner ensembles.

In rehearsal they concentrated on intonation, balance, precision of ensemble, rhythm and articulation, leaving phrasing and fingering at least partly to the inspiration of the concert hall.

Even while honoring such nineteenth-century precedents, Busch and his colleagues were pioneers in their day, bringing a new forcefulness to bear on the music of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, and bowing very much 'into the string' with more vibrato than had been typical at the time.

Another trademark was their vast range of dynamics, but although they had the tonal wherewithal to fill a large hall they preferred to play in smaller rooms like those in which Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven were first heard.

Beyond the core Classical repertoire, the Quartet performed a fair amount from the Romantic era, especially Brahms and Dvořák, while modern music was represented by Reger, Tovey, Suter, Walker, Andreae, and Busch himself.