Adolf BUSCH (1891-1952)
Serenade for String Quartet in G, Op.14 (1918) [22:50]
Seven Bagatelles for clarinet, viola and cello, Op.53a (1936) [11:01]
German Dances in F major for clarinet, violin and cello, Op.26c (1926)
[7:34]
Duet in B flat major for violin and clarinet, Op.26b (1921) [12:39]
Variations on an original theme in F major for clarinet and string quartet,
Op.53c (1942) [3:21]
Wolfgang Meyer (clarinet)
Eisler Quartet
rec. March 2012, Fürstenhaus Festsaal, Hochschule für Musik
CAVI-MUSIC 8553268 [57:20]
The violinist Adolf Busch, distinguished soloist
and first violinist of the quartet that bore his, and his cellist-brother’s
name, wrote music throughout most of his life; seventy works with opus
numbers, in total. We’ve yet to get to get to grips with the Symphony
or either of the concertos - one for his own instrument, the other for
piano - or indeed the lieder that he had begun to write as a student,
songs largely based on poems by Mörike, Hans Sachs and Theodor
Storm. Here, though, we have an opportunity to encounter a subset of
his compositional output - works for clarinet and strings.
Chamber music looms large in his compositional output, as one might
expect of a great chamber player and Hausmusik in particular.
This is the name given to his Op.26 which consists of three pieces written
in 1921 but published five years later. From it we hear the Duet for
violin and clarinet, and the German Dances. The Duet has a Mozartian
lightness of touch, though it’s not necessarily that to be found
in his celebrated Duos for violin and viola. Busch is an assured but
non-doctrinaire contrapuntalist and writes engagingly but also simply
for the two instruments. The slow movement is warmly conceived, and
the finale playfully done. The German Dances are written for clarinet,
violin and cello. Starting with a languid waltz things pick up via a
vivace section full of elegant bonhomie.
Much earlier, in 1918, he had written his Serenade for String Quartet,
which became one of his most popular works, and which his quartet often
performed. A critic of the time alluded to Seville in discussing the
first movement, but I can’t hear anything quite so Iberian. In
fact the moods and reflections are quite frankly and unpretentiously
expressed, and very well distributed amongst the four voices. A genial
march is followed by a sweetened elegy and that by an exciting scherzo
with a freighted melancholy trio. The most impressively constructed
part of the work is the nine-minute finale, a theme and variations with
a real sense of contrast and cleverness, calling for some corporate
skill.
The Bagatelles for clarinet, viola and cello (1936) were part of his
Op.53. There are seven very brief pieces, Hausmusik in the best
sense. Also part of that opus number is the final work in the programme,
the Variations on an original theme in F major for clarinet and
string quartet, composed in 1942 by which time Busch was living in America.
The theme is based on a Busch song setting of 1907 and he unfolds four
very mellifluous and engaging variations, in compressed time. The whole
thing is over in under three-and-a-half-minutes.
These committed and elegant performances advance Busch’s cause
on CD as a modest but effective composer.
Jonathan Woolf
