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Having arrived in America
by diverse routes the Busch Quartet
reassembled in June 1940. They’d recorded
heavily for HMV in Europe but in New
York RCA Victor wasn’t keen to do the
same so the quartet signed a contract
with Columbia, then very much a junior
partner to RCA when it came to classical
artists (the pendulum was to turn later).
Busch suffered a heart attack before
Columbia began a gap-filling recording
contract to lay down all those Beethoven
works the Busch Quartet hadn’t yet committed
to disc but he was sufficiently recovered
for recording to begin in May 1941.
The discs were cut on 16" lacquers
but, as Tully Potter’s notes explain,
in the interim the Coolidge Quartet
had recorded their own version for Victor
and so the duplication did for the Busch’s
version, which was not issued. This
is its first CD appearance, which we
owe to Potter’s intervention. Its Razumovsky
companion here, No.1 in F, was recorded
during May 1942 and suffered no such
reverses, appearing on 78, LP and CD.
Its qualities are widely known and appreciated.
The E minor lacquers
have survived in fine condition and
this transfer is successful in thus
giving them wider distribution than
they’ve so far received. The quartet’s
rhythm, not least in the Allegro first
movement, is one of the most outstanding
qualities of the group. They gave far
more of a sense of verticality to the
music than most of their contemporaries
and kept everything alive in faster
movements. The Allegretto is taken at
a good tempo – slower than the Budapest
took it – but quite brisk and at the
same kind of tempo that a later group
such as the Fine Arts habitually took
it. The finale is full of flight and
energy. But it’s the slow movement that
will excite most interest. Potter, Busch’s
staunchest admirer, calls it ‘unequivocally
the finest-ever recording of the movement
ever made’. Listeners will make up their
own minds (I simply can’t agree) but
its slowness evinces a spiritual depth
and concentrated vision that seems to
me to be undercut by an over-prayerful
and disruptive caesura before the violin’s
ethereal solo statements. I should also
note that at 14.32 it is very slow,
slower even than the 1926 Lenér
Quartet. Vulgarian that I am I am more
comprehensively moved by the late Budapest
recording of 1960 and by several other
performances come to that.
The companion quartet
has a relaxed opening movement and a
well judged slow movement by which I’m
more convinced than Op.59 No.2. There
are certainly moments of untidiness
along the way but few, The performance
is very recommendable, though not, it
seems to me, quite the equal of the
earlier European Beethoven recordings.
The transfers are attractively
done; the slight moments of shrillness
in the E minor are presumably inherent
in the original lacquers. This latest
Biddulph expands the Busch CD discography
still further and enticingly.
Jonathan Woolf
Busch String Quartet 