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Music: Serkin’s Second

2 minute read
TIME

A crowd packed Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall one night last winter as it always did when Arturo Toscanini was leading the Philharmonic. A skinny young man in ill-fitting clothes and thick glasses came on to play two piano concertos. He looked unimpressive, shy as a rabbit. But before he had got through many bars everyone realized his extraordinary talent. When he finished the first concerto the audience clapped and cheered wildly. Toscanini stepped back among the musicians and applauded with them. Last week young John Barbirolli, 37, brought back young Bohemian-born Rudolf Serkin, 33, for a second New York performance that all but eclipsed his first.

Pianist Serkin again submitted himself reverently to the music, became a part of the great singing orchestra, made his most intricate runs seem incidental. Despite the attention he has won in Europe and the U. S., he still seemed flustered by the applause. All his life he has made music numbly, not as a showman. When he was a boy in Vienna his parents were so poor that they had only one room for themselves and eight children. There in the din and clatter young Rudolf learned to play.

At 12, under the tutelage of Professor Richard Robert, he made his debut in Vienna. At 14 he began to study composition under Modernist Arnold Schonberg. He met Violinist Adolf Busch when he was 17, thenceforth appeared with him in chamber music recitals. He began to strike out for himself as a soloist in England. France, Switzerland. Holland, Italy, Spain. Austria. In 1933 the German Government refused to let Serkin, a Jew, play at the Brahms Centennial in Ham burg (TIME, May 1, 1933). Violinist Busch, an Aryan, withdrew too, took the young pianist to live with him in Basle. Year and a half ago Serkin married Busch’s young daughter Irene.

Pianist Serkin scored his second Manhattan triumph three days after his second Chicago one. Later this season he will play twice more in New York. Other engagements will take him to Winnipeg, Cincinnati, Toronto, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Dallas. Next March he sails again for Europe.

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