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.
