BUSCH conducts Beethoven in the USA

This week we enter the finishing straight of our year-long Beethoven 250th birthday celebrations with a fantastic set of recordings conducted by Fritz Busch in the USA. Busch is captured here conducting three of the country's finest orchestras - the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra - in the Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5 and the Egmont Overture.

Perhaps the highlight though comes in two rare opportunities to hear both Busch brothers together, as Fritz conducts his sibling Adolf Busch in two performances of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Recorded a day apart in 1942, the first is a live rendition from Carnegie Hall, followed by a studio recording made the following day, both with the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York.

And because we had a little time left over, and it's Beethoven year, we've dug very deep into the archives to pull out a special bonus track, by far the earliest Busch recording to appear thus far on Pristine, a recording of the Scherzo from the Eroica Symphony, recorded in Stuttgart in 1919.