Rudolf Serkin

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Rudolf Serkin (28 March 1903 – May 1991) was a Bohemian-born pianist.

He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's top Beethoven interpreters.

Early life, childhood debut, and education — how the life, childhood, and education intersect.

Serkin was born in then Eger, Kingdom of Bohemia (now Czech Republic), to a Russian Jewish family. Mordko Serkin's father, a Russian basso, "had been a Russian basso, and he taught him to read music before he could read words."

He was sent to Vienna at the age of 9, where he studied piano with Richard Robert and, later, composition with Joseph Marx, making his public debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at 12. He studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg from 1918 to 1920 and was active in Schoenberg's Society for the Private Performance of Music.

Personal life

Serkin married Irene Busch, the daughter of German violinist Adolf Busch, in 1935.

He and Irene were the parents of seven children (one of whom died in infancy), including pianist Peter Serkin and cellist Judith Serkin. They had 15 grandchildren, including composer David Ludwig and bassoonist Natalya Rose Vrbsky.

Serkin died of cancer on May 8, 1991, aged 88, on his Guilford, Vermont farm. Irene Busch Serkin, his widow, died in 1998.

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Career

Serkin began performing in Berlin in 1920, with the German violinist Adolf Busch and his family, which included a then-3-year-old daughter Irene, whom Serkin would marry 15 years later.

In 1921, he made his Berlin debut as the keyboard soloist in Busch's orchestra at age 17. 5. Busch told Serkin to play an encore to the enthusiastic audience at the end of the performance. Serkin later revealed that he begged Busch, "What shall I play?" "As a joke" told Busch, he should play the Goldberg Variations, "and I took him seriously." Adolf Busch, Artur Schnabel, Alfred Einstein, and myself were all left when I finished: Adolf Busch, Artur Schnabel, Alfred Einstein, and me."

Serkin appeared in Europe both as soloist and with Busch and the Busch Quartet in the 1920s and 1930s. Serkin and the Busches (who were not Jewish but who vehemently opposed the Nazi regime) and the German Revolution in 1933, they left Berlin for Basel, Switzerland, as Hitler's rise in Germany.

Serkin appeared at the Coolidge Festival in Washington, D.C., where he appeared with Adolf Busch in 1933. He began his solo concert career in the United States with the New York Philharmonic under Arturo Toscanini in 1936. Ludwig van Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto was critically acclaimed; Olin Downes of the New York Times wrote, "We've never heard a pianist's performance that so admirably combined the most penetrating analysis with artistic enthusiasm and warm emotion." In a similar vein, the technological results were clear and precise, but also beautiful and with a poetic tint." Serkin appeared at Carnegie Hall for the first time in 1937, earning critical praise: "What Mr. Serkin did was to expose a colossal art, which he dedicated to the most idealistic causes."

The Serkins and Busches immigrated to the United States, where Serkin taught many generations of pianists at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, shortly after World War II began in 1939. He served as the Institute's director from 1968 to 1976. He and his growing family lived in New York, Philadelphia, and eventually in Philadelphia, as well as in rural Guilford, Vermont. Serkin and Adolf Busch formed the Marlboro Music School and Festival in 1951, with the intention of boosting interest in and performance of chamber music in the United States. He made numerous recordings from the 1940s to the 1980s, including one at RCA Victory of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 10. Toscanini conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1944. The bulk of his recordings were produced for Columbia Masterworks, but he also appeared for Deutsche Grammophon and Telarc in the 1980s. Serkin loved Max Reger's music, which he discovered while working with Adolf Busch. In 1959, he became the first pianist in the United States to perform Reger's Piano Concerto, Op. 107. Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra accompany 114.

Serkin received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, and he commemorated his 100th appearance with the New York Philharmonic in March 1972 by playing Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 10. 1. Serkin was also named an honorary member of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society by the orchestra's board, an award given to Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, and Paul Hindemith. In 1986, he commemorated his 50th birthday as a guest artist with the orchestra. He is considered one of Beethoven's top interpreters of the twentieth century's music.

He was promoted as a musician's musician, a father figure to a legion of younger students who attended the Marlboro School and Festival, and a pianist with a nagging musical reputation in 1989.

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