While the Busch Chamber Players’ 1935 recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (reissued on EMI, 12/91) has entered gramophone legend, their recording of Handel’s 12 Concerti grossi, Op. 6 from 11 years later, has hardly been remembered at all. In neither instance was Busch first in the field, Alfred Cortot having recorded the Brandenburgs in 1932 (Koch, 11/93) and Boyd Neel having completed his first set of Handel’s Op. 6 in January 1938 (Pearl, 10/95).
Perhaps the most striking feature of Busch’s Handel concertos is his lively feeling for tempo, especially in faster movements and dances. Slow movements, by contrast, are inclined to be weighty and ponderous; the Largo of the Second Concerto in F major – not F minor as the booklet would have us believe – is a case in point, where upwards of four minutes seems, in the light of current performance practice, a lifetime. Boyd Neel, too, on occasion could make a meal of largos and larghettos: his Musette in the Sixth Concerto in G minor lasts a full six minutes, whereas Busch’s version takes a mere five, and still seems too deliberate. Listening to the two versions side by side, I am struck by the widely differing string techniques of the respective ensembles. In the Boyd Neel performances we can sense the struggle between mainstream, catch-all string playing and new ideas about phrasing and articulating baroque music. With Busch the playing is cleaner and less vulnerable to stylistic anachronism. Portamentos, for instance, are seldom heard in fast movements and where they are allowed – as in the Largo e piano of the Seventh Concerto in B flat, and in several of the slow movements – they are clearly applied deliberately, as an ornament. Nowadays, of course, the effect sounds hopelessly misjudged, as does the lethargic playing of the Andante of the same concerto, and the Allemande of the Eighth Concerto in C minor. Both sets, incidentally, feature a harpsichord rather than a piano as keyboard continuo. Busch had previously preferred a piano (Rudolf Serkin) for the Brandenburgs, but here has called upon Mieczyslaw Horszowski whose contribution is, however, rather indistinct – just as Busch would have wanted, I suspect.
Taken as a whole, however, the Busch version of Handel’s great set of Concerti grossi is marginally the more successful of the two. The pioneering work of Boyd Neel was yet to pay off, as it certainly did in his fine 1955 recording of the Op. 6 for Decca (7/55 – nla). It’s very ironic that this set, unrivalled in its time, and still to be preferred to many that have followed, has never been reissued on CD. Neither Boyd Neel’s earlier recording, nor those (currently unavailable) of Busch (Columbia), Fritz Lehmann (DG) or Hermann Scherchen (Nixa) can hold a candle to it, so would someone please see to the matter and instigate its long-overdue release?
The present set further includes performances of four miscellaneous baroque items, privately recorded at a concert given by the Busch Chamber Players in New York in 1943. They are all interesting for different reasons, the Schutz Kyrie (SWV428), for instance, featuring a piano continuo played by Lukas Foss. The reading of Bach’s Orchestral Suite in C major shows no significant difference from the commercially recorded version of 1936. Tempos, if anything, are slightly slower in the New York concert, where the Forlane further acquired an explanatory subtitle, “Danza Veneziana”.
Pearl have done excellent work on the transfers though the sound remains variable with the Fifth Concerto, suffering from woolly opacity and blurred perspective. This is a thoroughly worthwhile addition to the catalogue for the light which it sheds on twentieth-century evolution in performing practice. But I shall conclude with a reiteration of my plea to rescue Boyd Neel’s Op. 3 (9/55), Op. 6 and his Water Music (2/55) from the Decca vaults.'