J. C. Bach		Symphony in G Major, Op. 3, No. 6
J. S. Bach		Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor, BWV 1052
Mozart		Concert Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in D Major, K. 382
Mozart		Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550

Peter Serkin, a vital force in American musical culture, returned to Caramoor to illuminate works for piano and orchestra by Bach and Mozart.  The Orchestra of St. Luke's presented a scintillating program under the baton of internationally-distinguished conductor, Andreas Delfs, who made his Caramoor debut.

Back to Top

ABOUT THE MUSIC

Johann Christian Bach
Symphony in G Major, Op. 3, No. 6

Johann Christian Bach was born in Leipzig on September 5, 1735 and died in London on  January 1, 1782. He composed this Sinfonia in G Major sometime in the early 1760s; it was published in 1765, along with five other symphonies, as Opus 3. The set was dedicated to the Duke of York. The sinfonia is scored for two each of oboes and horns, strings and continuo.

Johann (or Giovanni, or John) Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian and the last of his line to be a distinguished musician, was among the most versatile composers of the late eighteenth century. His range may have developed in part because he broke away from the family traditions in several significant respects: rather than remaining in north-central Germany, as most of his ancestors and siblings did, he moved first to Italy, and then to London (locales that are reflected in the nicknames by which he was known—the “Milan Bach” and the “London Bach”); he converted to Catholicism and absorbed fully and at first hand the Italian operatic style, which, combined with his own graceful melodic sense, sturdy form, and the craftsmanship that Johann Sebastian seems to have been able to inculcate in all his children, resulted in a personal style that was both popular and influential. The composer who drew most from it was Mozart. The eight-year old prodigy met Johann Christian during his first visit to London and admired him ever after.

Johann Christian went to London in 1762 for the first time to compose operas for the King’s Theatre, and his success was so great that he settled there permanently. Within the year, he was lodging with Carl Friedrich Abel, a composer and viola da gamba player, whom he may have known already as a boy in Leipzig. The two men began a series of subscription concerts that was to have a profound effect on London’s musical life. In 1765, they gave a series of ten concerts, increased in the next year to fifteen. The Bach-Abel concerts continued at fifteen programs a year until 1781 (the last year of Bach’s life), when their number was reduced to twelve. They took place on Wednesdays between January and May (with the exception of Lent), and the two directors organized and led alternate concerts. Many of the works performed were of their own compositions.
In 1774 Bach, Abel, and Giovanni Andrea Gallini purchased a site on the corner of Hanover Street and Hanover Square and jointly financed the construction of a new concert hall, which was opened with the first concert of their 1775 series. They had, however, overreached themselves. New competition in London’s concert life meant a falling off of income, and before long they were forced to dissolve their partnership. Still, the Hanover Square Rooms remained as one of the leading halls of the day, and the Bach-Abel concerts continued to be given there, even though there were financial difficulties.

Though Bach’s music was very highly regarded by such connoisseurs as Mozart and the indefatigable observer of the musical life around him, Charles Burney, it lost the favor of a fickle public with astonishing quickness. Always on the lookout for novelty, London audiences preferred the new operas by Sacchini to the later works of Johann Christian Bach. Financial difficulties caused by a crooked housekeeper, who had forged receipts for more than ,1000 and then absconded, left the composer burdened with debt—all that he could leave his widow, the Italian opera singer Cecilia Grassi, upon his death at the age of 46. Mozart noted that J. C.  Bach’s death was “a loss to the musical world,” but it went little noticed by the average concertgoer in London. The man who had been an energetic organizer and a kindly and liberal friend ready to come to the aid of others with benefit concerts and other assistance, was promptly forgotten. So, too, Londoners passed over the composer’s musical estate in the interests of newer styles (which he had played a role in developing).

Though they cannot be precisely dated, the symphonies published as Opus 3 were most likely written for the first series of Bach-Abel concerts. Their vivacity and directness no doubt contributed to the success of the Bach-Abel concerts.  In the G-Major symphony, the opening Allegro assai is bracingly energetic in its vigorous, pulsing theme. The melody of the contrasting theme is more lyrical, but the accompaniment continues a rhythmic activity that keeps it full of life. The Andante is sweetly pensive in a way that we might regard as proto-Mozartean. It is scarcely surprising that the eight-year-old Mozart admired Johann Christian Bach so highly, and it is possible that he was acquainted with this very symphony. The closing Allegro assai rollicks along in a galloping rhythm suggesting that Johann Christian had become sufficiently anglicized in his first years in London to accommodate himself to the British tradition of “the hunt”!

Back to Top

Johann Sebastian Bach
Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor, BWV 1052

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach on  March 21, 1685 and died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750. The piano (that is, harpsichord) concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, took its present form in Bach’s Leipzig period, though precise details are lacking; it is a reworking of an earlier concerto, now lost. In addition to the solo keyboard, the score calls for strings and continuo.
 
The solo concerto was one of the highest developments of the concerto principle?the opposition and competition of musical forces?that is fundamental to Baroque style from the earliest concerted madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi (about 1600) to the very end of the era and beyond (when it was adapted by Classical composers to new circumstances). The establishment of the concerto as a flexible and powerful genre in its own right was largely the work of Antonio Vivaldi. His publications covered the continent of Europe and taught many composers who had never made the journey to Venice (where they might have heard Vivaldi’s concertos on their home ground) exactly how the orchestral ritornello could serve to unify movements, first presenting the basic material, then recalling portions of it in different keys as the movement progresses, then finally restating the whole in the home key to conclude the process.
 
Bach had been gripped by the frenzy of discovery when he encountered the Vivaldi concertos during his years in Weimar (1708 1717), and he became a Vivaldi disciple through the close study of some of his works and the sincere flattery of imitation. Bach transcribed a number of Vivaldi’s works, changing violin concertos into keyboard concertos in the process, so that when he came to write his own original concertos, he had fully absorbed the latest style.
 
During the Cöthen years (1717-1723), Bach wrote many instrumental works, but no original keyboard concertos. He did compose the six Brandenburg concertos, at least two of the orchestral suites, and concertos for one or two violins or for violin and oboe, and evidently some oboe concertos, now lost. We, of course, are very familiar with the notion of the piano concerto, and we may be surprised that Bach seems not to have thought of writing a keyboard concerto for Cöthen, if only to show off his own virtuosity. Yet the standard keyboard instrument of the time (the harpsichord) was usually used only in the background, filling out the textures in every kind of chamber music.
 
The Brandenburg concertos were part of an entirely different tradition, that of the ensemble concerto, or what a modern composer would call a “concerto for orchestra.” The fifth of these, though, is especially interesting in the present context, because we can almost perceive the birth of the new keyboard concerto right in the middle of the first movement, when the harpsichordist gradually usurps the listener’s attention and suddenly erupts in a brilliant solo cadenza.
 
Only after writing the Fifth Brandenburg did Bach begin to compose solo keyboard concertos, and even then they were not usually new pieces, but rather new versions, for solo harpsichord, of concertos already composed for violin and other instruments.
 
Why did Bach invent this new genre, and why did he suddenly compose a group of keyboard concertos in Leipzig in the 1730s? At this time, Bach had been settled in Leipzig for nearly a decade. During the first years he had been totally immersed in producing the large amount of church music that his position required of him. But he became disillusioned when the city fathers, who controlled the purse-strings, disregarded his pleas for money to provide more and better musicians in the Leipzig churches. So he began to look elsewhere for musical satisfaction. One source of such activity was the collegium musicum, a free association of professional musicians and university students that had been founded by Telemann in 1704. Bach took over its direction in 1729 and retained it, with one interruption, until 1741. He may even have continued to perform occasionally until it went out of existence in 1744, following the death of the coffee-shop proprietor who was its organizer and landlord.
 
The group gave weekly concerts during the year and even more frequent performances during the annual fair (Leipzig was then, and remains, a center for international commerce). It is clear that the seven surviving keyboard concertos for solo harpsichord, as well as those for more than one keyboard, were produced at this time, obviously to fill a pressing need for material.  They no doubt also served as vehicles for Bach’s burgeoning family of talented musicians, some of whom surely made their debuts in the coffee-house concerts.
  
Some of Bach’s concertos are very likely derived from works of other composers, and for that reason are not heard as often as they might be otherwise. But the D-minor concerto can be confidently attributed to Bach himself, almost certainly adapted from a lost violin concerto of the Cöthen period. We can be sure of his authorship because he used two of its movements (with organ solo) in his Cantata 146, composed for Easter sometime between 1726 and 1728. He used it again for the opening Sinfonia of his Cantata 188, composed for Trinity Sunday in 1728. In its final, and only surviving, form, this work exercised a powerful influence on the development of the keyboard concerto.

The D-minor concerto is probably the best known of all of Bach’s keyboard concertos. The vigor and tensile strength of its opening ritornello is one of the most familiar passages in the composer’s entire output, and it generates an opening movement of great drive and panache. The very first measure provides most of the orchestral material for the movement, while the soloist’s interludes offer a wonderful range of virtuosic devices that Bach has imaginatively translated to the keyboard from the violinistic original. The Adagio provides the framework for a richly ornamented and sensitive aria in the keyboard part, while the final Allegro, based on a tiny motif of two sixteenth-notes and an eighth-note, is imbued throughout with a dance-like character.

Back to Top

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Concert Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in D Major, K. 382

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, who began calling himself Wolfgang Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777, was born n Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791.  He composed the Rondo in D in Vienna in March 1782 as a new finale to an older concerto, K. 175, and played it himself a year later in Vienna on March 11, 1783. In addition to the solo piano, the score calls for flute, two oboes, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings. Duration is about eight minutes.

Mozart’s first original piano concerto was the one in D Major that we know as K. 175 (four earlier concertos are properly to be classed as “arrangements,” since they are recompositions of piano sonatas by other composers, expanded to include ritornelli; they were probably exercises set by Mozart’s father).  Composed when Mozart was a few months short of his eighteenth birthday, it is filled with energetic rhythmic interplay and an amazing range of moods.  The finale, in particular, is an original conception for a concerto, a sonata form overlaid with contrapuntal elements (anticipating such later achievements as the last movement of the Jupiter Symphony).  It remained a favorite work of Mozart’s for a long time.  He played it on a concert given by his friends the Cannabichs in Mannheim during his tour in 1777-1778 and reported to his father, “The concerto is much liked.”  He brought it out again in Vienna soon after moving there permanently as part of a concert given by Aloysia Lang.  But this time he felt it necessary to replace the highly original contrapuntal finale with a new one designed to suit the taste of the Viennese public, a taste altogether less sternly intellectual and more hedonistic.  The result was the graceful set of variations which were originally published as the finale of the concerto but have, more appropriately, attained a concert life of their own, since the original finale suits the rest of the work better.  (Alfred Einstein remarked disapprovingly that K. 382 was “the first instance of Mozart’s having to write down to the taste of the general public.”)

The music, though called a rondo, is actually a very straightforward theme-and-variations; the only thing that remotely justifies the term rondo is the fact that two of the variations, placed roughly to correspond to the episodes in a simple rondo form, are more varied than most:  one is in the minor key, the other in the major, but tempo Adagio.  Other than this, the movement proceeds without so much as a single harmonic deviation or expansion from the tonic-dominant pattern presented in the first statement of the theme.  The entire movement, then, is an exercise in the graceful embellishment of a melody over the simplest possible harmonies.  The Viennese loved it.  Mozart reported the day after the concert, “they did not cease to applaud, and I had to repeat the Rondeau;?it was a proper deluge.”  It was no doubt pleasant to be so well received in one of his earliest appearances in his new home, but if this was the kind of thing the Viennese wanted, it is no wonder that Mozart’s later and much more elaborate music was criticized as overly intellectual.

Back to Top

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550

Mozart’s last three symphonies, K. 543, 550, and 551, were all composed during the summer of 1788, probably for a series of subscription concerts that seem not to have taken place. The dates of the first performances are unknown. Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, was completed on July 25, 1788. The score originally called for flute, two each of oboes, bassoons, and horns, plus strings. Later, Mozart rewrote the two oboe parts for two each of oboes and clarinets; the original version is what will be heard at this performance.

One of the greatest miracles in the history of music is Mozart’s achievement in the summer of 1788, composing his last three symphonies in the space of six weeks. The sheer speed is daunting; even more impressive is the striking variety between the three works, each of which has a character and mood all its own. The middle work, in G minor, was completed on July 25; we have no record that any of these symphonies was ever performed in Mozart’s lifetime, though he is unlikely to have composed something as elaborate as a symphony (much less three of them) purely “on spec,” and he must have anticipated some concert series on which they would be heard.

By June 1788 Mozart’s fortunes had entered on the long, steady decline that culminated in his death at age thirty-five, three-and-a-half years later. He was the sort of open-handed type who could never stop spending money faster than he earned it, and when the Viennese public found other novelties for amusement, Mozart’s star began to fade. By early June 1788, only weeks after the Vienna premiere of Don Giovanni, Mozart was forced to write to his friend and fellow Mason, Michael Puchberg, requesting the loan of 100 gulden. Again on June 17 he needed money to pay his landlord and asked Puchberg for a few hundred gulden “until tomorrow.” Yet again on the 27th he wrote to thank Puchberg for the money so freely lent him, but also to report that he needed still more and did not know where to turn for it.

Clearly Mozart was in serious financial difficulty. During the summer he composed some educational pieces, which could serve students well, and some easy pieces that might be expected to have a good sale when published?practical ways of earning money. Yet he also composed three whole symphonies, an unlikely solution to his money problems, unless he had some plan of using them in a practical way. His first letter to Puchberg referred to “concerts in the Casino” from which he hoped to obtain subscription money in order to repay his debts. It seems, then, that he wrote all three of the symphonies with the aim of introducing them at his own concerts. But as far as we know, the concerts never, in fact, took place, and Mozart probably never heard these three great contributions to the symphonic repertory.

The symphony conventionally numbered 40 (Mozart never numbered any of them) was destined to become his most famous. It was one of the few Mozart symphonies to remain in the repertory throughout the Romantic era, thanks largely to its “romantic” use of the minor mode, though no less perceptive a critic than Robert Schumann failed to find in it the pathos that seems so striking to us; Schumann regarded the symphony merely as a work of grace and charm. His view strikingly illustrates the way stylistic change?in particular the extremes of romantic expression?made the great achievements of the preceding generation seem emotionally limited. Only the last half century has come fully to appreciate the expressive variety, ambiguity, and power in a musical language that is so polished and precise. Yet, that polish conceals an element of the demonic, not least in the fact that this symphony remains in the minor through the last movement, when virtually all other minor-key symphonies of the day would relent and offer a cheerful last movement in the major.

The opening is nearly unique among classical symphonies?a hushed rustling, growing out of silence. A symphony is a public event, and in Mozart’s day it was customary to begin with a loud chord played with a downbow in all the strings, to get things off to a solid start (the performances were conductorless), to establish the home key in no uncertain terms, and possibly to shush the audience. Even in those Mozart symphonies in which the allegro starts softly, it is always preceded by a slow introduction that begins forte. But in Symphony No. 40 we are instantly in the middle of things before we realize it. The theme emphasizes an expressive falling semitone, an age-old expression of yearning; and the melody and accompaniment raise questions about where the beat really falls in the phrase. Modulation begins already after the first emphatic cadence, and we soon reach the second theme in the relative major. Here we have to give Schumann full points: even if the passion of the symphony was lost on him, no one can dispute the grace of the new theme, with its passing chromatic tones, which prove to have consequences later. The ambiguity of phrasing so important in this movement is splendidly illustrated in the return to the main theme at the recapitulation, where the violins are already playing the long upbeat to the opening phrase during the last two measures of the development, while the winds are winding down to the cadence. The continued power of the minor mode over the expressive forces of the symphony becomes clear in the recapitulation when the second theme, instead of returning in the major, now arrives in the minor, further darkening the mood.

The slow movement is in the related major key of E-flat, but it is filled with passing chromatic figures and melodic sighs, linking it to the expressive world of the first movement. Moreover, it is cast as a full sonata-form movement, which lends it greater weight. The development section remains tense in its harmonic adventures before returning to the home key for the recapitulation. The Menuetto, ostensibly a dance genre, is much too severe to suggest dancing at all; only the contrasting Trio, in the major mode, offers a brief respite from the prevailing chromatic character.

The last movement, like the first, remains in G minor at the close, a very rare case in the 18th century, in which the minor was regarded as unstable and generally “softened” at the very end of works. Even with finales that begin in the minor, the sun almost always emerges in the coda. But Mozart reiterates the minor mode throughout, building the development almost entirely out of the movement’s opening figure (which arpeggiates the minor triad), leading still further into daring harmonic realms before whirling home to the recapitulation. Here, as in the first movement, the second theme appeared in the major during the exposition, but its return at the recapitulation—now in G minor—signals that there is no respite. Grace and charm (as Schumann noted) are indeed present, but Mozart offers obsessive energy and passion, too.

                                                                                                  © Steven Ledbetter  (www.stevenledbetter.com)

Back to Top

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Andreas Delfs, conductor ~ Having celebrated his eleventh year as Music Director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO) during the 2007-08 season, Andreas Delfs continues to garner national and international accolades through the MSO national radio series and guest conducting appearances in the United States and abroad. Through innovative and progressive programming each season with the MSO, a well-established rapport with the audience, and an electric podium presence, Mr. Delfs has fashioned a model for the next-generation of music directors in America.

In the past, Mr. Delfs has held chief artistic posts with several distinguished institutions both in North America and Europe. Most recently, he led the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as music director (2001-2004), and artistic consultant (2004 -2006). In Europe, he served as General Music Director of Hannover, Germany (1995-2000), conducting that city’s symphony orchestra and opera company, where he led the European premiere of American composer John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera), in addition to premiering many works by Europe’s most distinguished composers. Prior to his time in Hannover, Mr. Delfs was Music Director of the Bern (Switzerland) Opera, resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony (during the tenure of Lorin Maazel as music director), and Music Director, at an early age, of the celebrated Orchestre Suisse des Jeunes.

Mr. Delfs’ continuing commitment to contemporary music is a distinguishing point in his career. Since his student days at The Juilliard School of Music in New York City, he has established a deep connection with living composers, and counts among his profound musical inspirations musicians such as John Corigliano, Philip Glass, Roberto Sierra, Lowell Liebermann, György Ligeti, Luciano Berio, Aribert Reimann, and Hans Werner Henze. Similarly, Mr. Delfs is in high demand as an esteemed collaborative conductor and is the frequent partner to many of the world’s most renowned solo artists, in both vocal and instrumental fields. Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, Itzhak Perlman, Maurizio Pollini, Mstislav Rostropovich, André Watts, Renee Fleming, and Frederica von Stade all make music with Mr. Delfs, either at his Milwaukee Symphony home or elsewhere around the globe.

Mr. Delfs continues to make recordings, including a collection of sacred songs with Renee Fleming and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, for the Decca label, which was released in 2005. In 2007, he recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and pianist John O’Conor on the Telarc label, and with the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin and cellist Claudio Bohorquez on the Edel Classics label. Past recording projects include a production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, released on the Avie label and the first ever digital recording of Hansel and Gretel in English, as well as a recent recording of Mozart’s Requiem with the St. Olaf Choir and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra on the Avie label. In 2005, Mr. Delfs and the Milwaukee Symphony became the first American orchestra to distribute their live recordings through online music store iTunes.

The Chicago Tribune noted, “the Milwaukee Symphony made a shrewd choice in tapping Andreas Delfs to guide its artistic fortunes.” With the MSO Mr. Delfs has been a leader in visionary performances and groundbreaking leadership. In 1999 Andreas Delfs took the MSO to Cuba, the first major American orchestra to perform there in 37 years. This historic tour was profiled in The New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, NPR and the major U.S. television networks. In recognition of this unique achievement, the Milwaukee Press Club presented Andreas Delfs with the 1999 “Headliner of the Year” award, stating “Andreas Delfs and the MSO were the most important news in Wisconsin in 1999.”
 
In addition, Mr. Delfs maintains both an active guest conducting schedule as well as maintaining and enlarging continuing relationships with distinguished institutions both in North America and abroad. This season marks the beginning of a new position for Mr. Delfs as Principal Conductor of the Honolulu Symphony. Other highlights from the 2007-2008 season include an appearance with the Louisville Orchestra., in addition to the MSO and Honolulu concerts. Elsewhere, he conducts a Beethoven Piano Concerto cycle, with pianist John O’Conor, with the Seoul Philharmonic, at the Seoul Arts Center. In Europe he makes an appearance with the Dusseldorfer Symphoniker, at the Tonhalle.

Mr. Delfs has appeared with many of North America’s major orchestra’s including the Philadelphia Orchestra (both in Philadelphia and at Carnegie Hall), the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic (both in subscription and at the Hollywood Bowl), and symphony orchestras in Houston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Dallas, Minnesota, Washington (NSO) and Atlanta, to name a few. He has also been a regular guest conductor at the Aspen Music Festival since 1985.

In Europe, Mr. Delfs has led such distinguished ensembles as the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands Philharmonic, the Leipzig Radio Orchestra and the Deutsche Kammer-philharmonie, with whom he has recorded an album for London’s Decca label. Additionally, Mr. Delfs led a tour of Spain and France with the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra and soloist Mstislav Rostropovich, who immediately invited Mr. Delfs to conduct the Moscow Conservatory Orchestra at the inauguration of the new concert hall at the Evian Festival in France. In April 1997 Mr. Delfs made his debut with the Sydney Symphony in Australia and in November 2000 he debuted with the NHK Symphony in Japan. In May of 2005, Mr. Delfs led the Taipei Symphony Orchestra in a concert that included new pieces by composers Fu Yuan Soong and Ma Shui Long.

Among Mr. Delfs’ most notable operatic achievements have been a highly praised debut with the New York City Opera conducting performances of Carmen during the 1995-1996 season and a production of the uncut version of Hans Werner Henze’s monumental Koenig Hirsch for the Württemberg State Theatre in Stuttgart. He led four productions at the Aspen Music Festival and gave the Swiss premiere of György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, which received special praise from the composer.
 
Born in Flensburg, Germany, he began the study of piano and music theory at age five and joined the roster of the Flensburg Stadttheater as conductor and composer at 17. He studied with Christoph von Dohnányi and Aldo Ceccato at the Hamburg Conservatory and served as a staff conductor at the Luneburg Stadttheater. At 20 he became the Music Director of the Hamburg University Orchestra, the youngest person ever to hold this post, and Musical Assistant at the Hamburg State Opera. Guest conductor at the Bremen State Theatre in 1981, Mr. Delfs graduated from Hamburg Conservatory that same year. Enrolling at The Juilliard School upon the recommendation of von Dohnányi, he studied with Jorge Mester and Sixten Ehrling, and won the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship on the way to receiving his master’s degree in 1984. He lives with his wife Amy, and their four children in Wisconsin and New York.

Back to Top

Peter Serkin, piano ~ Recognized as an artist of passion and integrity, American pianist Peter Serkin is one of the most thoughtful and individualistic musicians appearing before the public today. Throughout his career he has successfully conveyed the essence of five centuries of repertoire and his performances with symphony orchestras, recital appearances, chamber music collaborations and recordings are respected worldwide.

Peter Serkin’s rich musical heritage extends back several generations: his grandfather was violinist and composer Adolf Busch and his father was pianist Rudolf Serkin. In 1958, at age eleven, he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he was a student of Lee Luvisi, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and Rudolf Serkin. He later continued his studies with Ernst Oster, Marcel Moyse, and Karl Ulrich Schnabel. In 1959, Mr. Serkin made his Marlboro Music Festival and New York City debuts with conductor Alexander Schneider immediately followed by invitations to perform with the Cleveland Orchestra and George Szell in Cleveland and Carnegie Hall and with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy in Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall. He has since performed with the world's major symphony orchestras with such eminent conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, James Levine, Herbert Blomstedt and Christoph Eschenbach. Also a dedicated chamber musician, Mr. Serkin has collaborated with Alexander Schneider, Pamela Frank, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Budapest, Guarneri and Orion string quartets and TASHI, of which he was a founding member.

An avid proponent of the music of many of the 20th and 21st century’s most distinguished composers, Mr. Serkin has been instrumental in bringing the music of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Wolpe, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Henze, Berio, Wuorinen, Goehr, Knussen and Lieberson, among others, to audiences around the world. He has performed many important world premieres, in particular numerous works by Toru Takemitsu, Peter Lieberson, Oliver Knussen, and Alexander Goehr, all of which were written for him. Most recently, Mr. Serkin played the world premieres of Charles Wuorinen's Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Boston Symphony under the baton of James Levine in Boston, at Carnegie Hall, and at Tanglewood; a solo work by Elliot Carter commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival; and another work by Charles Wuorinen for piano and orchestra with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, also commissioned by Carnegie Hall.

Highlights of Peter Serkin’s recent and upcoming concert appearances include performances with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, and the Boston, San Francisco, Detroit, St. Louis, Toronto and Atlanta symphonies; recitals in Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Orchestra Hall in Chicago and New York’s 92nd Street Y; performances with the original members of TASHI in Boston, Portland, Oregon, Princeton, and Town Hall in New York City; and summer festival appearances at Ravinia, Aspen, Ojai, Caramoor, Tanglewood, Blossom, Saratoga and the Mann Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

On the international stage, Mr. Serkin returned to Japan in September 2007 to play recitals featuring the works of Toru Takemitsu and Bach in honor of the 10th anniversary of Takemitsu’s death.  During the 2007-2008 season, he appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie Orchestra, and the Bamberg Symphony.

Peter Serkin’s recordings also reflect his distinctive musical vision. The Ocean that has no West and no East, released by Koch Records in 2000, features compositions by Webern, Wolpe, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Knussen, Lieberson, and Wuorinen. That same year, BMG released his recording of three Beethoven sonatas. Additional recordings include the Brahms violin sonatas with Pamela Frank, Dvorák’s Piano Quintet with the Orion String Quartet, quintets by Henze and Brahms with the Guarneri String Quartet, the Bach double and triple concerti with Andras Schiff and Bruno Canino, and Takemitsu’s Quotation of Dream with Oliver Knussen and the London Sinfonietta. His most recent recording is the complete works for solo piano by Arnold Schoenberg for Arcana.

Mr. Serkin’s recording of the six Mozart concerti composed in 1784 with Alexander Schneider and the English Chamber Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy and received the prestigious Deutsche Schallplatten as well as “Best Recording of the Year” by Stereo Review magazine. Other Grammy®-nominated recordings include Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus and Quartet for the End of Time on BMG, and a solo recording of works by Stravinsky, Wolpe and Lieberson for New World Records.

In May 2001, Peter Serkin was the recipient of an Honorary Doctoral Degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He was also the first pianist to receive the Premio Internazionale Musicale Chigiana in recognition of his outstanding artistic achievement. Mr. Serkin resides in Massachusetts with his wife, Regina, and is the father of five children.

Back to Top