Adolf Busch (violin)/Rudolf Serkin (piano)
At the Library of Congress 1944-48
John Stafford Smith (1750-1836)
The Star-Spangled Banner (arr. Busch)
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Violin Sonata No 1 in G major, Op 78
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Rondo Brillant in B minor, Op 70 D895
Adolf Busch (1891-1952)
Violin Sonata No 2 in A minor, Op 56
rec. live, 1944-48, Library of Congress, Washington DC, USA
PRISTINE AUDIO PACM114 [68]
Busch (1891-1952) is centre-stage rather than Serkin (1903-1991), the aspirant ‘youngster’, then in his forties. That said the fully mature Serkin (1903-1991) is for me amongst the most satisfying and eagerly intemperate of aristocratic pianists. He ranks in my scales of affection above the much-revered Richter, Ashkenazy and Gilels, for example, in the Brahms Piano Concerto No 2.
In Brahms’ First Violin Sonata, Busch’s gregarious, singing tone is captured in fullest flood. He also renders, with fidelity, the starker colours in the Adagio. Touching in the finale - Allegro Molto, Busch evokes a full spectrum of romance. The violin is notably and pleasurably searching in the movement’s gentle contours and also in its triumph. Background surface noise can, on occasion, be heard in the quieter moments in the finale. This ends with a whisper of tenderness and no applause - at least none taken down here. Applause is heard only at the end of the first movement.
The balance is very close to the listener in the Brahms but in the happily beaming Schubert Rondo Brillant (1826) it is, at first, quite eccentric. Let’s say stalls row 15 for Busch and Serkin upfront in row 3. There’s applause at the end of the Schubert.
The Adolf Busch Sonata dates from 1941 and was premiered in the Library of Congress concerts in 1946. This is what we hear. Again, Busch pours generously into the singing line just as in the Brahms. His tone, it now strikes me as a novice in these matters, compares with that of Oistrakh and Zimbalist. It is unbroken and with cornucopiac emotion poured unstintingly and incontinently. He also conveys vulnerability and a sometimes almost breathless effect. The music has its melancholy harmonic slides but recognisably remains the work of a rootedly Romantic and conservative composer. The micro-sized Molto Vivace capers in delicious Ariel-Mendelssohnian terms before the final Allegretto Amabile. The latter at first rings true as a cosmopolitan street-scene delight. Soon however it searches out deeper and more ambiguous emotional territory. The mood becomes wild. There’s risk-imbued feral playing from both players to match. It ends in an extended curve of a downward gradient to culminate in a slowly liberated beauty. There’s a tandem integrity about the writing and the playing. The audience appears to appreciate this. It’s a fine and heart-joyous work of which we should hear more.
These, at times close and clean-sounding, XR re-masters are, as usual, the work of Andrew Rose. The music blooms as best it can - and that quite handsomely - from sensitively preserved and processed archival acetates that were never designed for commercial issue.
The unison Star-Spangled Banner is soon over and sounds like the full-on invocatory anthem it was; subtle, not at all, but not bumptious either.
Dr. Jürgen Schaarwächter, he of the grand study of the British symphony to 1945 and of the Reger Institute in Karlsruhe, wrote the programme note for the disc.
I was not able to compare this disc with the overlapping Music and Arts 4CD set from 2011. I mention it to encourage you to read Jonathan Woolf’s review.
Rob Barnett
