Busch Like Brahms

When a professional-looking German walked quietly and unaffectedly across Boston's Symphony Hall stage last week, there were subscribers who settled back in their chairs with the idea that the afternoon's interest was over. The German, Adolf Busch, was unknown to most of them. He carried his violin as unostentatiously as if it had been a brief case. He was to play the familiar Brahms' Concerto, surely of less interest to an up & coming audience than Respighi's glittering arrangement of five Rachmaninoff Picture Studies or Florent Schmitt's gruesome Tragedy of Salome. . . .

The Koussevitzky orchestra had a long, symphonic introduction before Violinist Busch tucked his instrument under his chin, demonstrated a great talent worthy of great music. Busch, like Brahms, scorns meaningless display. In music alternately heroic and deeply tender, he displayed an immaculate, full-toned technique, an interpretative sense marked by the same marvelous simplicity and restraint that he has succeeded in preserving in his pupil, young Yehudi Menuhin. In Manhattan the Busch name is familiar because of Adolf's brother Fritz (they were the sons of a famed Westphalian violin-maker), who conducted the New York Symphony for a time. In Manhattan next week Violinist Busch will be given an enviable debut.* Conductor Arturo Toscanini, who usually refuses to have soloists on his programs, has invited Busch to play at his first concert of the season. Toscanini and Busch are great friends. They exchange little conversation because Busch speaks almost no Italian, Toscanini almost no German. But they spend a great deal of time gazing at one another in affectionate admiration. When the Philharmonic toured Europe a year ago last spring, Busch attended almost all the concerts. Toscanini has traveled from Switzerland to Milan to hear Busch's famed string quartet.

*Violinist Busch will be heard only with orchestra on his first U. S. tour. From Boston he goes to Detroit, Manhattan, Minneapolis, Chicago, accompanies the Philharmonic to Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore, ends his tour at St. Louis.

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