VI - Berlin and Busoni

Summary

It was Busch's ill luck to be based in Berlin during the years when the city was at its least attractive. When he and Frieda moved to Lichterfelde with Irene in September 1918, the war was drawing to its humiliating close and revolution was imminent in the capital. During the time they lived there, inflation – which made the German economy the sickest in Europe – grew progressively worse. The fevered artistic atmosphere which would pervade Berlin later in the 1920s had not yet begun to weave its spell: life was hard and uncertain, music in a state of decay. A concentrated effort was nevertheless made to keep concert life going; and even in the years immediately after the War, Berlin could boast two of the outstanding talents in German music, Strauss and Busoni. Strauss was in charge of the Hofkapelle (Court Opera Orchestra) concerts until the end of the 1919–20 season, to be succeeded by Furtwängler for two years and then – following a season's interregnum with Abendroth – by Erich Kleiber. Soon to become the Staatskapelle, this orchestra was the best in the city; but after Furtwängler moved to the Philharmonic on the death of Nikisch in 1922, he rapidly improved that organisation. The conductors beginning to make their names, as guests or residents, were Emil Bohnke, Franz von Hoesslin, Otto Klemperer, Hermann Scherchen, Georg Schnéevoigt and George Szell; and experienced men such as Leo Blech, Oskar Fried, Max von Schillings, Georg Schumann and (from 1923) Bruno Walter were active, as well as the choral specialists Bruno Kittel, Siegfried Ochs and Hugo Rüdel. Busoni, who returned in 1919 from his self-imposed exile in Switzerland, made memorable appearances as soloist and conductor. Others who graced Berlin's concert platforms were the pianists Eugen d’Albert, Wilhelm Backhaus, Eduard Erdmann, Edwin Fischer, Carl Friedberg, Walter Gieseking, Wilhelm Kempff, Leonid Kreutzer, James Kwast, Frieda Kwast-Hodapp, Elly Ney, Max Pauer, Egon Petri, Moriz Rosenthal, Emil von Sauer and Artur Schnabel and violinists Licco Amar, Carl Flesch, Fritz Kreisler, Alma Moodie, Mikhail Press, Alexander Schmuller, Emil Telmányi and Franz von Vécsey. Several talented violinists were emerging, such as Tossy Spivakovsky, Georg Kulenkampff, Boris Kroyt and Josef Wolfsthal.