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Fritz Busch was one the greatest German conductors of the first half of the twentieth century, noted for his illuminating performances and his ethical principles. His father was a former itinerant musician who became an instrument maker, and his brothers were violinist Adolf Busch and cellist Hermann Busch. Fritz Busch went to Cologne Conservatory in 1909, studying conducting with Steinbach.

The city of Aachen hired him as music director in 1912. He served there until the war began, enlisted, and returned at war's end to conducted the Municipal Opera. Six weeks later, he was appointed music director of the Stuttgart Opera. He quickly became famous for his performances and for the reforms he instituted to enlarge the repertory and discover new composers. He premiered two one-act operas of the young Paul Hindemith, operas by Pfitzner, and shook up the Wagnerian tradition by using Appia's modern approach to staging and sets for the Ring operas. Busch accepted a position with the Dresden State Opera, becoming music director in 1922. Among his premieres in the 11 years he remained there were Strauss' Intermezzo (1924) and Die Ägyptische Helena (1928), Hindemith's Cardillac (1926), Busoni's Doktor Faust (1925), and Weill's Der Protagonist (1926). He was credited with keeping Dresden at the highest level of German opera production with stagings that were often provocative, with some of the finest of modern artists designing sets and costumes. One of the most important was a production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, designed by Carl Ebert and including a meticulously chosen cast, at the 1932 Salzburg Festival.

Busch was openly contemptuous of the new Nazi government that was appointed to power in Germany in 1933 and was fired from his Dresden post. At the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, he conducted the first complete performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion ever given in the Americas. He returned to Europe, appearing with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Stockholm Philharmonic, beginning a long-standing relationship with them. Then John Christie asked Busch to become music director of a summer opera festival at Glyndebourne, England. Busch accepted, bringing Ebert as artistic director. Glyndebourne was soon among the most prestigious of summer festivals, famous for meticulous musical preparation and use of the best and most appropriate voices. Mozart has always been a mainstay of Glyndebourne, but under Busch it also staged larger-scale works, including Donizetti's Don Pasquale and Verdi's Macbetto.

With the outbreak of the war (which closed Glyndebourne for the duration and made travel to Scandinavia impossible), he withdrew mainly to South America, although he made appearances at the New York Philharmonic. His Metropolitan Opera debut was on November 26, 1945, in Wagner's Lohengrin. He remained on the Met's conducting roster until 1949, but asked to be allowed to concentrate on conducting the company's annual national tours. He frequently conducted the Chicago Symphony from 1948 to 1950, and resumed his association with the Scandinavian orchestras in 1949 and at Glyndebourne in 1950. He returned to lead a few concerts in Austria (Vienna Staatsoper, 1950) and in Germany (Cologne and Hamburg, 1951).

He died in London, leaving several important recordings. The Busch Brothers Society private label has released several of them as part of a program to document the legacy of Busch, his two brothers, and the piano trio they often formed.

The Tonkünstler Orchestra has roots stretching back to the vibrant Viennese culture of the early 20th century and even beyond. The group has recorded extensively and has attracted world-class conductors from beyond Austria and central Europe.

The Tonkünstler Orchestra was founded in Vienna in 1907 with 83 musicians. The group is known in German as the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich or Musical Artists' Orchestra of Lower Austria, and its name pays homage to the Tonkünstler-Sozietät that presented works by Haydn and Mozart in the late 18th century. The group's first concert featured works by Beethoven, Grieg, Liszt, and Karl Goldmark. In 1913, the orchestra gave the premiere performance of Schoenberg's Gürre-Lieder. Its activities contracted during World War I, and it was replaced by a new Wiener Tonkünstler Orchestra in 1933, with Leopold Reichwein as conductor. The group continued to operate through the Nazi era, mostly under the name Gausymphonieorchester Niederdonau and mostly in direct support of the German war effort. The year 1946 brought the name Niederösterreichisches Tonkünstlerorchester and a new conductor, Kurt Wöss. After a 2002 restructuring, the present name was applied. Major conductors in the 20th century included Gustav Koslik (1951-1964), Heinz Wallberg (1964-1975), Miltiades Caridis (1978-1988, the group's first conductor not from Austria or Germany), and Brazil's Isaac Karabtchevsky (1998-1994, the orchestra's first non-European leader). The orchestra's recording catalog dates back to the LP era; an early digital release was a 2008 recording of Haydn's Die Schöpfung on the TON 4/Zebralution label.

The Tonkünstler Orchestra performs in Vienna at the Golden Hall of the Musikverein. It also has a second headquarters in Sankt Pölten in Lower Austria province, where it is state-supported, performing at the Festspielhaus Sankt Pölten. The ensemble serves as orchestra-in-residence at the Grafenegg Festival outside Vienna. Conductors during the 21st century have been an internationally prominent group, including Carlos Kalmar (2000-2003), Kristjan Järvi (2004-2009), Andrés Orozco-Estrada (2009-2014), and Yutaka Sado (2015-2025). In 2025, Fabien Gabel was scheduled to take up the baton. A major recording under Järvi was one of Leonard Bernstein's Mass for the Chandos label in 2009. The Tonkünstler Orchestra has also recorded for the Preiser Records, Oehms Classics, and Wergo labels, among others. In 2024, the group moved to Naxos and released a recording of orchestral works by Franz von Suppé. By that time, the group's recording history included more than 20 albums. ~ James Manheim