Description
The Busch Quartet is generally regarded as the greatest string quartet ensemble of the mid-20th century. Beginning their career in 1912 as the Vienna Konzertverein Quartet before they became the Busch Quartet when they established themselves in Berlin in 1919. Their HMV records made in London before the Second World War spread their fame around the world. With the Nazis rise to power, however, Adolf Busch and his wife emigrated to New York, along with their daughter Irene and her husband Rudolf Serkin, Busch's sonata partner. In the ensuing years, the other Quartet members eventually made their way to the United States as well. In 1941, they began recording again, but for American Columbia. The Haydn Minuet that begins this CD was among the first records they made for the U.S. label, and has a special place in the Quartet's discography as it is the only Haydn the ensemble ever made. A recording ban enforced by the American Federation of Musicians resulted in another hiatus in the Quartet's activities in the studio. In the interim, two of the members in the original ensemble had changed and the Quartet continued until the leader's retirement at the end of 1951. The two Brahms chamber works included here were made in London in May 1949. With the new medium of magnetic tape, they set down magnificent accounts of Brahms's B-flat Quartet, op.67, and G-minor Piano Quartet, op.25. Although Adolf Busch missed knowing Brahms personally, all his teachers had been in the composer's circle and he was acquainted with a number of Brahms's close friends. Having recorded the first two of Brahms's quartets, their reading of the composer's third and final B-flat Quartet is perhaps the finest. The recording of Brahms's G-minor Piano Quartet displays Serkin at his most leonine. The string players' mastery of portamento, a device often misunderstood and neglected today, is an object lesson in cantabile. And when it comes to the scintillating Hungarian finale, we meet another aspect of the Busch-Serkin magic.
