Adolf Busch (1891–1952) enjoys a reputation as one of the greatest of all violinists: his recordings of Beethoven with the Busch Quartet have never been surpassed. By contrast, Busch as a creative figure is almost unknown, but he was also one of the major composers of his day, equally natural as contrapuntist and melodist, with a style that owed much to his boyhood idol, Max Reger.

Part of the neglect is Busch’s own fault: always a man of principle, he sacrificed his career as both violinist and composer with his dignified refusal to perform or be performed in Nazi Germany.

This CD of his lyrical writing for clarinet, the second in a series of recordings of Busch’s light-filled chamber music, is part of the rediscovery of one of the leading musicians of his day.

Bettina Beigelbeck, clarinet, has appeared as a soloist with a number of orchestras, with not only the usual clarinet concertos in her repertoire – for example, with the cellist Maximilian Hornung, she recorded the Double Concerto of Peter von Winter with the South-West German Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sebastian Tewinkel. The Busch Kollegium Karlsruhe – its personnel drawn, as the name suggests, from musicians based in Karlsruhe – was founded by Bettina Beigelbeck expressly to make this and the earlier recording and intends to continue to record chamber music by Adolf Busch and his contemporaries.