textures in the classical repertoire so cherished by his father.
Serkin, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 72, played everything from Bach to Berio and Mozart to
Messiaen, sometimes using a 19th-century fortepiano to perform period works. He also acquired a
reputation as something of a concert-hall rebel, performing in a dashiki and love beads in the early 1970s
before trading his countercultural attire for three-piece pinstripe suits, settling into a role as one of his
generation’s preeminent performers.
He regularly commissioned works from contemporary composers – a stark departure from the
traditionalism of his father and maternal grandfather, the conductor and violinist Adolf Busch. The two co-
founded the Marlboro school along with Adolf's brother Herman. Rudolf and Adolf were among those who
started a chamber festival in Vermont, US, a classical-music incubator that shaped legions of young
musicians – including Serkin.
Serkin admired Frank Zappa, John McLaughlin, the Grateful Dead, John Coltrane and Sun Ra in addition to
classical works. Among the latter, his favourites included Arnold Schoenberg’s keyboard compositions,
which he recorded in full, and Olivier Messiaen’s eight-movement Quartet for the End of Time, which he
performed roughly 150 times with his chamber group the Tashi Quartet.
Serkin recorded numerous albums for RCA Red Seal Records, performed solo recitals around the world,
accompanied leading orchestras and chamber groups, and taught at the Juilliard School, Tanglewood, Curtis
Institute of Music and Bard College Conservatory of Music. He eschewed publicity and once declared that
he’d “rather play 20 concerts before 3,000 people than give one interview”.
Early on it seemed that his music career might collapse under the weight of professional pressures and
family expectations. Beginning in the late 1960s, when he was in his mid-twenties and primarily focused on
standard repertory, Serkin abandoned the piano to embark on soul-searching journeys to Mexico and India.
He became interested in religion, immersing himself in the Sufi, Buddhist and Hindu faiths, but recalled
ending his Mexico trip after hearing a radio broadcast of Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto wafting on the
breeze.
It was the kind of loose, emotionally intense performance that had long eluded him. He returned from his
travels with a more relaxed approach to music, even as he maintained an academic rigour that he learned
from his father, studying composers’ letters and examining first editions of their scores.
“The idea so many musicians have – that you have to act out the music for the audience, to supply it as a
solidified object – is death,” he said. “Music is change, it’s process, not a static thing. And if you want to be
part of that process you have to continue to grow.”
The fifth of seven children, Peter Adolf Serkin was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1947. His middle
name was an homage to his grandfather Busch, with whom the Bohemian-born Rudolf Serkin began
performing as a teenager in Berlin (both men immigrated to the United States after the outbreak of the
Second World War).
Bach and Beethoven were so infamous in their own day for being outlandish, outrageous
His mother Irene was also a musician, who played piano, violin and viola. She was credited with helping to
keep the Marlboro festival afloat after Adolf’s death in 1952, and it was there that Serkin made his formal
debut, performing a Haydn concerto under the conductor Alexander Schneider.
Serkin studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, taking lessons from Polish-born virtuoso Mieczyslaw