Peter Serkin

Peter Serkin (born July 24, 1947 in Manhattan, New York City, New York - died February 1, 2020 in Red Hook, New York) was a distinguished American pianist.

He was born in New York City and is the son of one of the world's leading pianists, Rudolf Serkin, and grandson of the influential violinist Adolf Busch, whose daughter Irene had married Rudolf Serkin. (Peter was given the middle name Adolf in honor of his grandfather, according to Rudolf Serkin: A life by Stephen Lehmann and Marion Farber, Oxford, 2003, p. 96).

In 1958, at the age of 11, Serkin began studying at the Curtis Institute of Music where his teachers included the Polish pianist Mieczysław Horszowski, the American virtuoso Lee Luvisi, as well as Serkin's father. He graduated in 1965. He has also studied with Ernst Oster, flutist Marcel Moyse, and Karl Ulrich Schnabel.

His concert career began in 1959, when he first performed at the Marlboro Music Festival, a seminal agent and incubator of chamber music performance in the U.S., established in 1951 by the elder Serkin, Hermann and Adolf Busch, along with Marcel, Blanche and Louis Moyse. Following that performance, Peter Serkin was invited to play with major orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell and the Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Ormandy.