Rudolf Serkin plays Beethoven

This montage from our Podcast Vault revisits a post from December 22, 2017. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast267

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On Beethoven’s 250^th birthday year (let’s not forget that the birthday is in December…), we’ve programmed a lot of Beethoven. One of the works featured today was also featured on the Tuesday Blog in January. To some, that is a tad repetitive, to others we can’t get enough of that beautiful Fourth concerto (count me in the latter category!)

All through the week, Project 366 embarked on a survey of Beethoven’s music, and in particular his piano concertos. Today’s installment, from December 2017, features two works: the Hammerklavier sonata and the Piano Concerto no. 4, both performed by Rudolf Serkin, a champion of German music of the late Classical and Romantic eras.

As my filler track this week, I thought I would keep to the Serkin and Beethoven angle, but this time featuring the younger Serkin, Peter.

Peter Serkin, a pianist who navigated a distinctive course through classical music with thoughtful interpretations of both standard repertoire and bracing new compositions, died of pancreatic cancer a few months ago at his home in Red Hook, N.Y..

Serkin was born in Manhattan on July 24, 1947 and was given the middle name Adolf, after his grandfather, violinist and conductor Adolf Busch. At age 11, he enrolled in the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and studied with the legendary Polish-American pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski. By age 12, Serkin was playing concertos at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont, chamber music in New York and in Cleveland with his father in Mozart's Double Concerto.

In the early '70s, Serkin recorded two albums from seemingly opposite poles: a set of Mozart Piano Concertos and Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus, a two-hour set of solo pieces spanning extremes of emotion and virtuosity. Both recordings were nominated for Grammy awards, and together signaled his way forward in terms of embracing contemporary music and standard repertoire.

Here he is, in live performance from Berkeley CA, in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in A flat major, Op 110.

I think you will (still) love this music too.