FRITZ BUSCH (1890-1951) Live Recordings 1950
Antonin Dvorak: Carnival Overture, Op. 92
Statsradiofonien Orchestra, Copenhagen
Edinburgh International Festival of Music & Drama concert at the Usher Hall, 26 August 1950
Johannes Brahms: Alto Rhapsody, Op. 53
Marian Anderson - contralto, Male Chorus of the Schola Cantorum (Hugh Ross)
Frederic Chopin: Concerto for piano and orchestra F minor Op.21
Claudio Arrau - piano
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra
Human Rights Day Concert at the Metropolitan Opera House, 10 December 1950, New York
'U.N. Program tonight honors human rights
The second world-wide anniversary of the adoption of the universal declaration of human rights will be observed at the Metropolitan Opera House tonight. The program will include addresses by Nasrollah Entezam of Iran, president of the United Nations General Assembly, and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, chairman of the commission on Human Rights, as well as a special concert.
Dr. Fritz Busch will conduct the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Marian Anderson, contralto, will sing Brahms' alto rhapsody with the Schola Cantorum directed by Hugh Ross. Claudio Arrau, Chilean pianist, will be heard with the orchestra in the Chopin concerto No. 2 in F minor.
Judith Anderson and Charles Boyer will read selections from the declaration and excerps from Handel's "Messiah" will be conducted by Sir Ernest MacMillan of Canada, with John Brownlee as baritone soloist.
The United Nations and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, co-sponsors of the ceremony, have arranged for it to be broadcast throughout the world as well as over station WNYC at 8:15 P. M. Admission to the concert will be by special invitation.'
Thus read the announcement, in the New York Times of 10 December 1950, of Fritz Busch's last public appearance in New York where for some five years, from 1945 to 1949, he had been artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera. Of course he had also conducted performances with the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra [nowadays simply called the New York Philharmonic], though little of it has survived on record, most notably his performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with his brother Adolf as the soloist, of 8 February 1942.
The UN event taking place at the Metropolitan Opera House, the building that was demolished in 1967, Rudolf Bing (1902-1997), newly-appointed General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, was the host. Bing's and Busch's lives had met several times previously, most notably upon the foundation of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 1934. Meanwhile the two strong personalities had become estranged, and when after the event on 10 December 1950 Busch spent half an hour with more or less interesting people, as an observer remarked, there was nobody Busch would still have felt emotionally attached to. He had just returned from Europe, where he had performed Mozart in Glyndebourne and Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms in Vienna (mostly for record; his only concert performance again included Dvorak's Carnival), Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Brahms in Copenhagen, and Dvorak, Strauss, Reger and Mozart (plus Brahms's Alto Rhapsody with soloist Kathleen Ferrier) in Edinburgh, and compared to Europe New York now felt ‘all the more incomprehensible and strange' to Busch; he wrote, ‘it is embarrassing to see how even the meanest yelping dog arrived at the feeding trough and fattened, even if they had not the slightest to do with art and remain incomprehensible to us, especially because they are so often successful business people.' It was obvious that Busch, now sixty years old, felt not any longer at home in New York, and his house in Riverdale northwest of New York City was a kind of refuge for him.
The dress rehearsal for the concert took place in the morning of 10 December, from 10 to 12.30 a.m., the concert began at 8.30 p.m. Sadly not all items of the concert seem to have survived on record: sound archives never list the opening two items - the Ceremonial Fanfare for brass and percussion by David Diamond (1915-2005), composed for the occasion, and Berlioz' Benvenuto Cellini Overture - nor the concluding item, substantial extracts from Messiah, which were conducted by Sir Ernest Macmillan (1893-1973). It is not entirely clear why, while most of the programme was conducted by Busch, this concluding item was conducted by Macmillan, a Canadian by birth who had been interned at Ruhleben camp, a civilian detention camp in Germany, during the First World War. Maybe the reason was that Busch was not especially in love with Handel's music, while on the other hand he at that time was especially interested in the Benvenuto Cellini Overture, which he was to perform again in his Cologne and Hamburg concerts in February 1951, his only three orchestral concerts upon his return to Germany after the Second World War. At short notice Eleanor Roosevelt's address was cancelled in the programme; Roosevelt had in 1947 become chairwoman of the Human Rights Commission; the declaration of Human Rights had been adopted officially on 10 December 1948.
Brahms' Alto Rhapsody had, by the end of Busch's life, become a kind of favourite composition of his, and it is his broadcast with Kathleen Ferrier of 1949 from Copenhagen which is the better known one of his two recorded renderings. For American contralto Marian Anderson (1897-1993) it was an even more symbolic event to perform the work in this concert, due to her Afro-American descent. She was to become the first Afro-American opera singer ever to perform a leading role on the Metropolitan Opera stage; after the 1950 programme she had to wait another four years until she was to debut as Ulrica in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera on 7 Januar 1955. Anderson was a close friend of Theodore and Eleanor Roosevelt, who in 1939 had organised an open air concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial for her to perform in. In 1958 she was appointed U.S. delegate on the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations. The pressure under which Anderson had to perform at the Metropolitan in 1950 can be physically felt by listening to her performance, which gives a strong feeling of her intensely felt interpretation.
The soloist in Chopin's F minor Piano Concerto, a work which was less regularly performed by Fritz Busch, was Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (1903-1991), who until 1940 had been a professor at the Stern'sches Konservatorium in Berlin. It was only comparatively late during the Nazi regime that Arrau emigrated with his Jewish wife, late at least compared to Fritz Busch himself who had left Germany as early as 1933. Arrau, a renowned interpreter of Liszt and Chopin, was not exactly the type of musician Busch preferred most, yet their performance of the Concerto became a thrilling experience.
Busch became entirely himself in the concert of 10 December 1950 in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, his only surviving interpretation of the work. Strength and energy are central features of Busch's rendering, which in its plain, straightforward approach gives also a clear image of the conductor himself. The day after the concert Busch received a letter from Trygve Lie, Secretary General to the United Nations:
'Dear Mr. Busch,
I would like to take this opportunity of expressing to you our deepest gratitude for the success of last night's concert commemorating the Second Anniversary of the Adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights. This concert will be heard by millions of people throughout the world, and I know that the listeners to the United Nations radio programmes will share with those of us present at the Metropolitan Opera the keenest appreciation of your superb direction.
A concert of this scope and quality is, in itself, a striking reaffirmation of faith in the Declaration of Human Rights and will, I feel sure, make a significant contribution to the development of greater understanding of the purposes and importance of this great document.'
A few months previously Fritz Busch had been a guest in Edinburgh, where since 1947 the Edinburgh International Festival is taking place. Until 1949 Rudolf Bing had been General Manager, but it was not to be until 1950 that Fritz Busch was to perform there regularly. Busch's only surviving recording of a concert performance from Edinburgh is one work only, Antonin Dvorak's Carnival Overture, with the forces of the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, of 26 August 1950. It is Busch's second surviving recording of the overture (the first one with the same orchestra having taken place in 1933), which remained Dvorak's only composition in Busch's discography. Busch's inspired conducting shows that he and ‘his' orchestra talked the same language, and that they were very well accustomed to each other due to many years of close co-operation. The two concert performances with which the orchestra made its debut in Edinburgh were an unanimous success, a critic writing: ‘Every detail in the music was accented in a manner which revealed an unfailing response to Dr Busch's masterly and incisive guidance. The brightness of string tone was a particular delight, and an enthusiastic audience was left impatient for more, and particularly the opportunity of hearing a Danish composition.' Plans were made for the orchestra to return to the festival soon. Fritz Busch's death on 14 September 1951 in London, just before his intended travel to Edinburgh, prevented any further co-operation.
Dr. Jurgen Schaarwachter - BruderBuschArchiv in the Max-Reger-Institut, Karlsruhe ( Guild )
