Nevertheless, Rudolf Serkin acknowledged that he had not given his son much encouragement early on. “I doubted he was talented,” he said in a 1980 New York Times Magazine profile of his son. “He was so full of tension when he played; I didn’t realize that was his real gift.” He said that having been compelled by his own father to be a musician, he “was reluctant to push Peter.”

At 11, Peter Serkin enrolled at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where his father was teaching. (Rudolf Serkin later became the institute’s director.) There he studied with the master Polish-born pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski, who became a major influence, as well as the American virtuoso Lee Luvisi and his father.

After graduating at 18, Mr. Serkin took an apartment in New York, avidly listened to recordings by Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead, and explored Buddhist and Hindu spiritual teachings. He found the pressure of playing in public, and simply of being a Serkin, almost crippling.

“Up until then I was playing concerts largely out of compulsion, and not much new music,” he said in a 1973 New York Times interview. “I had just fallen into it without ever deciding for myself that it was what I wanted to do.”

After his time off and restorative travels, he resumed performing with renewed satisfaction. That he had found the right balance was suggested by the success of two three-LP albums, both recorded in 1973, when he turned 26, both of which earned Grammy Award nominations.

The first offered Mozart’s Piano Concerto Nos. 14-19, with Alexander Schneider conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. The performance splendidly balanced Schneider’s Old World approach to Mozart with Mr. Serkin’s youthful, rethought playing.