After his 1928 concert tour in Berlin, Bush returned to the city to study piano under Artur Schnabel. He left the ILP in 1929, and joined the Labour Party proper, before taking extended leave from the RAM to begin a two-year course in philosophy and musicology at Berlin's Friedrich-Wilhelm University. Here, his tutors included Max Dessoir and Friedrich Blume. Bush's years in Berlin profoundly affected his political beliefs, and had direct influence on the subsequent character of his music. Michael Jones, writing in "British Music" after Bush's death, records Bush's concern at the rise of fascism and antisemitism in Germany. His association with like-minded musicians such as Hanns Eisler and Ernst Hermann Meyer, and writers such as Bertold Brecht, helped to develop his growing political awareness into a lifelong commitment to Marxism and communism. Bush's conversion to full-blown communism was not immediate, but in 1935 he finally abandoned Labour and joined the British Communist Party.