Fritz Busch

Буш Фриц (13.03.1890 - 14.09.1951) - немецкий дирижер, пианист.

Fritz Busch was born in Siegen, Westphalia, Germany on March 13 1890 and he suddenly died after a heart attack in London on September 14 1951.
F ritz Busch is little known outside the circles of the cognoscenti, and even there he"s sometimes confused with his brother, violinist, conductor and composer Adolf Busch. Fritz is best known for his classic pre-war Glyndebourne Mozart opera recordings, made after he fled the Nazis in 1933 despite his "Aryan" credentials. By then he was already well established as an opera conductor and champion of his contemporaries from Berg to Hindemith and beyond.

Fritz Busch was the eldest of five remarkable sons of Wilhelm Busch an instrument maker and amateur fiddler who settled at Siegen. His brothers were the violinist and composer Adolf Busch (1891-1952), the actor Willi Busch (1893-1951), the cellist Hermann Busch (1897-1975), and the pianist and composer Heinrich Busch (who died young). As children, Fritz and Adolf played dance music with their father in taverns. Fritz Busch was one of the great conductors of the 20th Century


He studied first locally in his birth town Siegen. In 1906 Fritz Busch studied with Professor Fritz Steinbach in Cologne Germany. After studies at the Cologne Conservatory, he rose rapidly through posts at Riga, Bad Pyrmont, Gotha and Cologne.

His career began in 1909 with a season as conductor at the Deutsches Theater (German Theater) in Riga he was only 19 years old. From Riga he went to Bad Pyrmont (Germany) to become Kapellmeister.

From 1912 until 1918 he was engaged as music director in Aachen Germany with responsibility for the city"s distinguished choral society, and as music director of the Aachener Symphonie Orchesters (Aachen Symphony Orchestra), but in 1914 at the age of 24 he volunteered for the army. At the end of World War I in 1918 he conducted the Aachen Municipal Opera for six weeks and thereafter he became music director at the Stuttgart Opera (1918 – 1922) in succession to Max von Schilling.

At the Stuttgart Opera he brought a fresh mind to widening the repertory and encouraging new artistic developments: for instance, with first performances of the young Hindemith"s one-act work "Mörder", "Hoffnung der Frauen" and "Nusch-Nuschi" including five Verdi operas, and three by Pfitzner, and he began the German Verdi revival.
During the 1924 - 1925 seasons he conducted the reopening of Bayreuth with Die Meistersingers. From 1922 to 1933 he was General Music Director of the Saxon State Opera in Dresden now known as the Dresden Staatsoper where for a decade he raised the musical standards to a high level. In de meantime he made several Guest appearances in New York in 1927 and 1928 and in London in 1929.

Though he was not immediately accepted as the fine opera conductor he became, and was criticized for not doing enough German repertory, Busch brought the Staatsoper to high renown.

The first performances given by Fritz Busch included:
Richard Strauss"s "Intermezzo" (1924)
Richard Strauss "Die Ägyptische Helena" (1928),
Busoni"s "Doktor Faust" (1925),
Kurt Weill"s "Der Protagonist" (1926), and,
Paul Hindemith"s "Cardillac" (1926)

He went on tour with the orchestra to the Salzburg Festival with W.A. Mozart"s "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" and with Verdi"s "Un ballo in Maschera" at the Städtische Oper, Berlin. He made a Film and several recordings with them.

B usch was not Jewish and, until he began openly to express dislike and mistrust of the Nazis, and vehemently opposed to the ethos of Hitler and the Nazi Party. He was not politically active. Bitter intrigues led to his dismissal from Dresden in March 1933. So, in 1933 after being dismissed at the Saxon State Opera in Dresden by the Nationalsozialisten (Nazi") He and his family left Germany in May after refusing to take his friend Arthuro Toscanini"s place at Bayreuth but he accepted an invitation of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentinia. He conducted three more seasons in Buenos Aires (in 1934 he gave there the first complete St Matthew Passion on the American continent). In Buenos Aires he was very beloved. He became an Argentinean citizen in 1936.

On September 17, 1936 Fitz Busch recorded with the Colón Orchestra and Chorus Wagner"s "Lohengrin" which was at that time the first complete recording of the opera. He recorded this opera with stars as:
Mairon Renè as Lohengrin
Hoerner Germain Elsa
Destal Fred Telramund
Lawrence Marjorie Ortrud
Kipnis Alexander Köning Heinrich and
Kern Fritz as Heerrufer.

Fritz Busch intensively appeared as guest conductor with the greatest orchestras of: England, Italy, the USA, and South America, he also conducted in London, Rome, New York City, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Leningrad
On his return to Europe that winter of 1933 to start a long association with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, he was greeted with the proposal to become music director of the private opera house John Christie had recently built at Glyndebourne. He accepted, on condition that Carl Ebert was made artistic director. Busch and Carl Ebert were the musical genius behind the Glyndebourne Festival. Fritz Busch conducted the Festival until his sudden dead in 1951. The festival"s level achieved by the carefully chosen and rehearsed ensemble at the summer festivals from 1934 until 1939, they are part of operatic history. The repertory was based on Mozart but included Donizetti"s "Don Pasquale" and the first staging by a British company of Verdi"s "Macbeth". Ironically, it was at patrician Glyndebourne rather than at Dresden that the democratically minded Busch came nearest to his ideal of being able "to build up an opera production in the smallest detail and with complete respect for the work".

From 1934 until the end of his career, with the exception of the war years, he conducted the Danish State Radio Orchestra, building it into a respectable ensemble, and he also guest conducted in Zurich Switzerland. Thereafter Fritz Busch spent all the winters up to that of 1940 in Scandinavia. He became so attached to Copenhagen that he turned down Arturo Toscanini"s offer to take over his post with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
During the period June 1940- 1945 he was mostly conducting in South America, with the exception of a Broadway experiment at the New Opera Company on Broadway in 1942 and that same year with some guest appearances with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

After World War II he divided his career between the USA and Europe. Between 1945 and 1949 he was artistic director and conductor of the Metropolitan Opera New York City and he toured with the Opera Company for four seasons.

Busch was never entirely at ease in New York, where one concert promoter complained that "he was not a showman". During the 1948-1949 seasons and in 1950 he conducted the Chicago SO, and in 1949 he resumed work in Copenhagen and Stockholm. Fritz Busch went back to Glyndebourne for the 1950 season. That year Fritz Busch took the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra to the Edinburgh Festival, and he also appeared as a guest conductor at the Vienna Staatsoper. In March 1950 he refused a post witch the Mayor of Mannheim offered him to become director of the Opera and Concert Academy.

In February 1951 he went back to West Germany to conduct the Cologne and the Hamburg Radio Orchestras. At Glyndebourne in 1951 he conducted four Mozart operas including "Idomeneo". The Glyndebourne "Don Giovanni" he repeated at the Edinburgh Festival, adding Verdi"s "La forza Del Destino". He had planed a come back at the Wiener Staatsoper but some weeks before he had to conduct the Orchestra of the Wien State Opera he died suddenly in London on September 14, 1950. His wife Greta Boettcher with whom he married in 1911 was born in 1886 and died in 1966

Busch was the soundest type of German musician: not markedly original or spectacular, but thorough, strong-minded, decisive in intention and execution, with idealism and practical sense nicely balanced. Recordings of three Mozart operas remain as testimony of his work at Glyndebourne, where a plaque dedicated to his memory and bearing his effigy is on the wall of the main foyer. It was his achievements at Glyndebourne however, which have kept his name alive.

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