Rudolf Serkin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rudolf Serkin (March 28, 1903 – May 8, 1991) was an Austrian-born pianist.

He was born in Eger, Bohemia (now Cheb, Czech Republic) to a Jewish Russian family. The family moved to Vienna when Serkin was nine, where he studied piano with Richard Robert and composition with Joseph Marx. Rudolf was hailed as a child prodigy, and he made his public debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at 12. He began a regular concert career in 1920, living in Berlin with violinist Adolf Busch and his family, which included the then three-year-old daughter Irene whom Serkin would marry 15 years later. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Serkin performed throughout Europe both as soloist and with Busch and the Busch Quartet. With the rise of Hitler in Germany, Serkin and the Busches left Germany first for Vienna, and then after the Anschluss, for Switzerland.

In 1935 Serkin made his first United States appearance at the Coolidge Festival in Washington, DC. The next year, he launched his solo concert career in the U. S. with the New York Philharmonic under Arturo Toscanini. The critics raved, describing him as "an artist of unusual and impressive talents in possession of a crystalline technique, plenty of power, delicacy, and tone purity." In 1937, Serkin played his first New York recital at Carnegie Hall.

Seeing the war approaching, the Serkins and Busches emigrated to the United States in 1939. Serkin took the post of Director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he taught many of today's finest pianists until 1978, and in addition to homes there and later in New York, the extended family settled on a dairy farm in rural Guilford, Vermont. After the war, Serkin and Adolf Busch founded the Marlboro Music School and Festival near Brattleboro, Vermont, and Rudolf made many solo recordings with Columbia in the 1940s.

Serkin was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and, in March 1972, he celebrated his 100th appearance with the New York Philharmonic by playing Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1. The orchestra also named Serkin an honorary member of the Philharmonic's Symphony Society of New York, an elite musical society that includes Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, and Paul Hindemith. In 1986, he celebrated his 50th anniversary as a guest artist with the orchestra.

Revered as a musician's musician and a father figure to a legion of younger players who came to the Marlboro Festival, he toured all over the world and continued his solo career and recording activities until illness prevented further work in 1989. He died of cancer at his beloved Guilford farm.

He and Irene were the parents of six children (one of whom died in infancy), including pianist Peter Serkin. Irene Busch Serkin died in 1998.