Peter Serkin: Complete RCA Album Collection (35-CD)

Discs: 35
Record Label: Sony
Release Date: June 19, 2020

He achieved notoriety in America in the 1970s as the young, rebellious, hippie-clad scion of a legendary musical dynasty — the son of pianist Rudolf Serkin and grandson of violinist Adolf Busch. But before that, and far more significantly, Peter Serkin, born in New York in 1947 and a student of Mieczysław Horszowski as well as his father at the Curtis Institute, had already established himself as a prodigiously gifted pianist and musical thinker in his own right, regularly appearing from the age of 12 in solo recitals and concerts.

At Rudolf Serkin’s Marlboro Festival, he played chamber music with his father as well as other pianists including Horszowski and Richard Goode, violinist Alexander Schneider and cellist Mischa Schneider. It was with them, starting in 1962, that he made his earliest recordings of concertos, sonatas and other works by Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Reger and Busoni for Columbia Masterworks, even playing harpsichord continuo in Pablo Casals’s famous set of the Brandenburg Concertos. In 1965 he began a long association with RCA Victor.

Over the course of 35 discs, experience the magic of Peter Serkin through time-tested classics and lesser-known contemporary works by the likes of Toru Takemitsu, Anton Webern, Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg.

Highlights:

Bach Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
1965 Grammy® Award, Most Promising New Classical Recording Artist

Bartók Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3
Seiji Ozawa conductor
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
1965, Orchestra Hall, Chicago

Messiaen Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time)
Richard Stoltzman clarinet
Ida Kavafian violin
Fred Sherry cello

Mozart Piano Concertos Nos. 14–19
Alexander Schneider conductor
English Chamber Orchestra

Schubert Piano Quintet in A Major, D. 667 (Trout)

Schoenberg Piano Concerto, Op. 42
Seiji Ozawa conductor
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
1967, Medinah Temple, Chicago