Rudolf Serkin

Rudolf Serkin (28 March 1903 – 8 May 1991) was a Bohemian-born Austrian-American pianist widely regarded as one of the foremost Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century. Born in Cheb, Bohemia (then Austria-Hungary, now the Czech Republic) to a Russian Jewish family, he was taught to read music by his father, a former Russian basso, before he could read words. Recognized as a child prodigy, Serkin was sent to Vienna at age nine to study piano with Richard Robert and composition with Joseph Marx, making his public debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at twelve.

Career

From 1918 to 1920, he studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg and participated in Schoenberg’s Society for the Private Performance of Music. He began his regular concert career in 1920, living in Berlin with violinist Adolf Busch and his family, including Busch’s three-year-old daughter Irene, whom Serkin married fifteen years later. At seventeen, his Berlin debut featured him as keyboard soloist in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with Busch’s ensemble; after the concert, Busch jokingly suggested he play the Goldberg Variations as an encore, which Serkin took seriously, finishing to an audience of only four people, including Busch, Artur Schnabel, and Alfred Einstein.

During the 1920s and early 1930s, he performed across Europe as a soloist and with Busch and the Busch Quartet. With Hitler’s rise in 1933, Serkin and the Busches left Berlin for Basel, Switzerland. That year, he made his first U.S. appearance at the Coolidge Festival in Washington, D.C., with Busch. In 1936, he launched his solo U.S. career with the New York Philharmonic under Arturo Toscanini, performing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto to critical acclaim; Olin Downes praised his combination of analytical depth, artistic enthusiasm, and poetic clarity.

Emigration to the United States

A 1937 Carnegie Hall recital earned further praise for its colossal art and idealistic purpose. After World War II broke out in 1939, Serkin and the Busches emigrated to the United States, where he taught generations of pianists at the Curtis Institute of Music, serving as its director from 1968 to 1976. He lived in New York, Philadelphia, and on a dairy farm in Guilford, Vermont. In 1951, he and Busch founded the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Vermont to promote chamber music.