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Egon Petri

via Egon Petri - Classics Online

The pianist Egon Petri was born in Hanover in 1881 and had his first violin lessons at the age of five from his father, the Dutch-born violinist Henri Petri, a favourite pupil of Joseph Joachim. Henri Petri had become Konzertmeister at the Royal Theatre in Hanover in 1881 and two years later took up a similar position with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, before moving in 1889 to lead the Royal Chapel Orchestra in Dresden Egon Petri started his study of the piano in 1888, going on to further work under Richard Buchmayer, a musician and scholar with a strong interest in earlier music, and with Teresa Carreno.

He also studied the organ, the French horn and composition, while completing his general education at the Dresden Kreuzschule in 1899. His first employment was as second violin in his father’s quartet and as a member of the Royal Orchestra in Dresden, but by 1901 it had become apparent to him that his true vocation was that of a pianist, a decision in which he was encouraged by Ferruccio Busoni, a friend of the family.

Petri went on to take lessons with Busoni in Berlin, where he also studied philosophy, continuing his studies under Busoni in Weimar and Dresden, before embarking on a concert career, at first in Holland and Germany, then throughout Europe and in the United States. One of the first foreign musicians of stature to visit the Soviet Union, he won considerable and continuing success there.

His association with Busoni, with whom he appeared in London in 1921 in two-piano recitals, remained of importance, influencing his style of performance and making him one of the foremost interpreters of Busoni’s work. Enjoying, at the same time, a very considerable reputation as a teacher, Petri served as a professor at the then Royal Manchester College of Music from 1905 to 1911, following this with similar work in Basle and at the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik. In 1927 he had made his home at Zakopane in Poland, but in 1938 he moved to America, spending the war years as pianist-in-residence at Cornell University and becoming an American citizen.

In 1947 he moved to Mills College in California, holding a similar position there and only interrupting his stay to teach briefly in Basle. He died in 1962.