Artist(s)

Peter Orth was born in Philadelphia and started playing the piano at four years of age. As a toddler he had long been demanding to be lifted on to the piano bench. Finally after several years of playing only by ear - having refused stubbornly to learn how to read the notes - he began formal training. On the occasion of his 6th birthday, Orth’s parents took him to his fi rst live concert, a recital of Arthur Rubinstein, where by intermission Orth knew that he would be a pianist.
By the time he was fifteen he was winning piano competitions, and was accepted on full scholarship to the class of Adele Marcus at The Juilliard School upon graduation from High School in Reading, Pennsylvania.
At the invitation of Rudolf Serkin in 1978 Orth became a member of the Marlboro Music Festival. He stayed in Vermont to study with Serkin at his Institute for Young Performing Musicians in Guilford and subsequently won fi rst prize in the 1979 Naumburg International Piano Competition held in memory of the great American pianist William Kapell. Awards followed from the Peabody Mason Foundation in Boston, and the Shura Cherkassky Prize from the ‘92nd Street Y’ in New York. As well as his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, and many other important venues in the United States, he received Orchestra engagements from the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as the Boston and Chicago Symphonies amongst many others. The New York Times wrote that Peter Orth is ‘a major talent’ upon his orchestral debut in Carnegie Hall.
In the 80’s Orth had the continued good fortune to encounter two more important musical infl uences: the pianist Paul Doguereau of Boston, and the conductor Sergiu Celibidache.
Doguereau was friends with Maurice Ravel and had studied with Egon Petri, Ignaz Paderewski, and Emil von Sauer. While General Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic, Sergiu Celibidache gave master classes that Orth attended for two years at the University of Mainz.
In the last seasons Peter Orth has kept a visible New York presence with recitals in Alice Tully Hall, Zankel Hall, Town Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum.
In 1992 Orth settled in Cologne, Germany to be with his partner and now husband, British-born Stewart Eaton, the Violist of the Germany-based Auryn String Quartet and began a new life and career from scratch.
In 2010 the pair moved to Horn-Bad Meinberg where both are Professors at the Hochschule für Musik in Detmold.

Composer(s)

Press

"In summary a well-filled disc of two major but hardly well known works of the Russian piano literature, in what I think is a unique coupling. If you don’t know either, Peter Orth will be a valuable guide to these contrasted masterworks. There is very good sound and a booklet note which has the relevant background to each composer and his opus, but is a bit skimpy on the actual music."
Musicweb International, 19-2-2016

["].. The American pianist Peter Orth, who as a boy of six knew he wanted to be a pianist after he heard a recital by Arthur Rubinstein, played the Preludes of Scriabin with the perfect balance between form and content, an expressive and melodious toucher, flexible tension and organic phrasing."
Klassieke Zaken, 01-12-2015