RUDOLF SERKIN Signed letter Famed PIANIST RARE

Description

RUDOLF SERKIN
-
very nice
typed signed letter. Mr. Serkin added a few bars of music in his hand at the bottom of the letter.
AUTHENTICALLY signed, Very GOOD vintage condition. An uncommon and scarce autograph.
RUDOLF SERKIN
(28 March 1903 – 8 May 1991) was a Bohemian-born American pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century.
Hailed as a child prodigy, he was sent to Vienna at the age of 9, where he studied piano with Richard Robert and, later, composition with Joseph Marx, making his public debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at 12. From 1918 to 1920 he studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg and participated actively in Schoenberg's Society for the Private Performance of Music. He began a regular concert career in 1920, living in Berlin with the German violinist Adolf Busch and his family, which included a then-3-year-old daughter Irene, whom Serkin would marry 15 years later.
Shortly after the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Serkins and Busches immigrated to the United States, where Serkin taught several generations of pianists at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. From 1968 to 1976 he served as the Institute's director. He lived with his growing family, first in New York, then in Philadelphia, as well as on a dairy farm in rural Guilford, Vermont.
Serkin was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and in March 1972 celebrated his 100th appearance with the New York Philharmonic by playing Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1.
Serkin toured all over the world and continued his solo career and recording activities until illness prevented further work in 1989. He died of cancer on 8 May 1991, aged 88, at home on his Guilford farm.