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Adolf Busch: The Life of an Honest Musician. By Tully Potter. London: Toccata Press, 2010. 2 vols, pp.1423. $145
These two hefty volumes constitute one of the most important musical biographies to appear in recent years. Its subject is a violinist who became one of the most renowned of German violinists as both soloist and chamber musician. In the latter role, he founded an eponymous quartet in 1919 that over the next two decades would become the most celebrated in Europe. In 1950, before declining health ended his life at 60 in 1952, Busch founded, with his son-in-law, the pianist Rudolf Serkin, the Marlboro School of Music in Vermont.
Potter, a colleague at The Strad, spent twenty-five years researching and writing the book. (I'll disclose here that I offered some assistance with discographic details.) Its breadth of documentation is prodigious. It seems as if no detail that could be discovered about the subject has been omitted. And what a subject! Born in 1891 into poverty in Wilhelmine, Germany,...