This is the first-ever full-length biography of the German violinist and composer Adolf Busch (1891-1952). Leader of the legendary Busch Quartet, Adolf Busch was for many the finest violinist of his day. This monumental publication chronicles his life in detail, from his earliest days as a child prodigy in Westphalia, his meteoric career as one of Germany's most thoughtful and expressive musicians, his friendship with Max Reger and other composers, his foundation of the Busch String Quartet, the concert tours which established a loyal following in Britain, Italy and elsewhere, his refusal to perform in Nazi Germany, to his emigration to the United States and his subsequent activities there. Appendices examine Busch as a teacher, his career in the recording studio, his playing of the viola, his compositions, and much more. Two CDs present a selection of unpublished Busch performances and another of his compositions. Tully Potter has been working on this biography for quarter of a century now, and his massive labour-of-love will rank alongside the late Peter Heyworth's Klemperer biography as one of the classics of its kind – and the mirror of an entire age.

In 1957 the Australian-American composer Percy Grainger, then 75 and in failing health, received a letter from another pianist-composer, the young Ronald Stevenson, writing from his home in West Linton, below Edinburgh. That first contact – requesting Grainger’s reminiscences of Ferruccio Busoni, with whom he had studied – led to an exchange of 32 letters over the four years before Grainger’s death in February 1961.

The two men soon found that, despite their 46-year age-difference, they had many affinities. Both were pianists of staggering abilities and composers who combined a love for folk-music and working-class art with an aesthetic that proposed a ‘world music’ to include the farthest reaches of humanity. Both made an art of piano transcription of a wide variety of works and were champions of little-known music and composers. And both revered the work of Walt Whitman, that great poet of inclusivity, the pioneering spirit and the open road.

This book presents both the complete Grainger-Stevenson correspondence and Ronald Stevenson’s many articles and lectures on Grainger and his music, edited by Teresa Balough, whose two interviews with Stevenson open and close the volume – which includes a CD of a lecture-recital on Grainger that Stevenson presented in Grainger’s home in White Plains, New York, in 1976.

Over the past few decades the music of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) has enjoyed a slow but steady rise in popularity, and his six symphonies, written between 1942 and 1953, have now been recorded many times; concert performances are on the increase, too. But Martinů and the Symphony is not only the first book in English intended to help the music-lover to a deeper understanding of these glorious works – it is by far the most comprehensive work on the subject in any language. Each Symphony is examined in turn, the analyses revealing what makes each creation so individual yet also so clearly part of a close-knit family of works and identifying the elements of his melodic, harmonic and instrumental style which produce Martinů's very personal vibrant and organic symphonic manner. Martinů and the Symphony is illustrated with almost 200 musical examples, taken not only from the Symphonies but also from Martinů's other works for large orchestra. His path to symphonic mastery is examined in unprecedented detail: attention is at last paid to the early orchestral works which, although largely unperformed and unpublished even now, afford fascinating glimpses of the composer to come. A study of the late triptychs The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca and The Parables rounds out this appraisal of Martinů's enthralling symphonic and orchestral legacy.

The English composer William Alwyn (1905-85) was not only one of the most versatile creative figures of his age, writing music for the concert hall, recital room, operatic stage and film screen; he was also a virtuoso instrumentalist and conductor, the teacher of some of the most important composers of the succeeding generation, and the founder of a number of influential music committees such as the Composers’ Guild of Great Britain. Alwyn was a gifted writer, too, alive to literature and art – especially pre-Raphaelite painting, on which he was an authority – as well as to music, and Composing in Words presents his most important writings: the autobiographical essay Winged Chariot; the diary, Ariel to Miranda, in which he chronicled the composition of his Third Symphony; an extract from Early Closing, Alwyn’s reminiscences of his Northampton childhood; and essays on film music, and on other composers, among them Elgar, Bax and Puccini.

In this second volume of selections from his journalism, the maverick English composer Havergal Brian (1876–1972) directs his enquiring mind at the music being composed in France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere while he and his British contemporaries were fighting to establish new music at home.

Richard Strauss figures prominently among the composers discussed, beginning with reviews of Hallé and Queen’s Hall concerts in 1907 and 1910. But even Strauss was not treated as lavishly as another whose music clearly fascinated Brian deeply: Arnold Schoenberg. From Gurrelieder to the Violin Concerto, Brian emerges as one of Schoenberg’s most sympathetic and understanding champions among the English critical fraternity in the inter-War period. Other composers featured include Bartók, Berg, Busoni, Debussy, Dohnányi, Dukas, Glazunov, Grieg, Hindemith, Kilpinen, Lehár, Mahler, Messager, Puccini, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Respighi, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Sousa, Stravinsky, Szymanowski, Tailleferre and Varese – as well as figures now obscure such as Alfred Bruneau, August Bungert, César Géloso and Wilhelm Kienzl.

Over 160 different items written over the four decades between 1907 and 1946 – articles, reviews and extracts from Brian’s column ‘On the Other Hand’ in Musical Opinion – make up this volume. Among those of major interest are Brian’s 1936 obituary for Alban Berg, a 1934 article on Busoni’s Piano Concerto from Radio Times, a substantial study of Dukas’ orchestral works, a 1939 evaluation of Mathis der Maler, articles on Mahler’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies from 1930 and 1934, and impressions written in 1923 on hearing Strauss’ Alpensinfonie for the first time. Among Brian’s writings on American music – a selection of which rounds off the book – is an interview with ‘the March King’, John Philip Sousa, whose music Brian wholeheartedly enjoyed. Indeed, it is Brian’s open mind that makes him such an illuminating and entertaining guide to the music he is writing about.

Malcolm MacDonald’s introductions and annotations provide the background to each piece and cast light on Brian’s more obscure references.