Busch, Adolf

Preface

Adolf Busch – Piano Concerto in C major op. 3

(b. Siegen, Germany, August 8, 1891 – d. Guilford, Vermont, USA, June 9, 1952)

Adolf Busch was born in Siegen in 1891; he received his first violin lessons from his father at the age of two and a half and gave his first public performance at the age of four. From 1902 to 1909, he studied at the Cologne Conservatory with Willy Hess, Bram Eldering and Fritz Steinbach. Adolf’s brother, the conductor Fritz Busch, described his brother’s composition lessons with Steinbach as “rarely given[…], but all the more excellent[…]”. In 1909, the brothers met Max Reger, and Adolf, accompanied by his brother Fritz, played the composer’s violin concerto from memory. Reger was enthusiastic, and Busch and Reger subsequently performed together many times. Busch’s compositional development owes a great deal to this friendship, although other composers, such as Ferruccio Busoni, later left their mark on Busch’s work, which was nevertheless very much his own.
In 1912, Adolf Busch became concertmaster of the Vienna Concert Association Orchestra and was appointed professor at the Berlin Academy of Music in 1918, which he gave up after only a few years. He had already become the leader of a string quartet in Vienna, which was renamed the Busch Quartet in 1918. …

Dr. Jürgen Schaarwächter
Max Reger Institute Karlsruhe with BrüderBuschArchive, 2024

Performance material is available from the BrüderBuschArchiv at the Max-Reger-Institut, Karlsruhe.

read full preface / deutsches Vorwort … > HERE