Dr. Jimbob's Home -> Classical Music -> Pianists -> Dinu Lipatti

Contents:

HOME

WORK

Biographical Abstract
Full curriculum vitae
Performance Resume

Internal Medicine
Medical Informatics
Traditional Chinese Medicine

PLAY

Cooking
Media
Travel

WESTERN CLASSICAL MUSIC

Dinu Lipatti

 Dinu Lipatti

Dinu Lipatti

disclaimer

Discs discussed on this page:

  • Bach, Mozart, and Schubert: studio recital
  • Chopin, Liszt, Ravel recital
  • Chopin: Waltzes, Barcarolle, et. al.
  • Concerto performances: Chopin, Schumann, Grieg
  • Live performances and rarities
  • Final recital at Besancon
  • Packing it all together: the legacy set

    • For more information:

  • Arbiter Records Pianist Museum (Lipatti's Final Essay)
  • CBC Great Pianists (biography, Real Audio profile & clips)
  • Inkpot Reviews (bio, detailed reviews of two discs)
  • Philips Great Pianists of the Century Series: Dinu Lipatti (with bio)

    • Posted to: rec.music.classical.recordings
    Subject: Dinu Lipatti: survey
    Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996

    montrsmu@pair.com wrote:

    Still my favorite single classical album of all time is Dinu Lipatti's sensational performances of Bach and Mozart. It includes IMHO the definitive rendition of Bach's Jesu, and perhaps the same can be said for everything else on the album. I believe it was on Columbia Masterworks originally released in the early '50s and I am wondering if anyone knows if it has been reissued on CD.

    Also, I have seen other Lipatti works on CD and wonder if any of them are as wonderful.

    It's a pity that Lipatti died of Hodgkin's lymphoma not long before chemotherapy started to become available. (As it was, expensive hydrocortisone shots kept him alive long enough to leave some divine things behind.) If he had been treated and lived, he would probably be making digital remakes of all his stuff (and I'd probably be busy arguing why he isn't the greatest pianist of the century). He was a meticulous craftsman, but could see the grand sweep along with the little details, and had a sumptuous lyric style that made just about anything that he did worth hearing. Pity that there isn't much.

    Many of the recordings were originally made by Radio Geneva or by EMI via its British Columbia branch, I suppose. They were issued at one point by American Columbia, but are now available from EMI in their mid-priced Great Recordings of the Century series. Some specific discs include:

  • Bach, Mozart, and Schubert: studio recital
    EMI 69800 is a CD which contains his studio recordings of Bach's Partita #1, two Organ Chorale Preludes arranged by Busoni (and Jesu Joy in the Hess arrangement), a Siciliano from a Flute Sonata in Wilhelm Kempff's reduction, two Scarlatti sonatas, and Mozart's Piano Sonata #8. There are also two Schubert Impromptus (D.899/2 & 3) from his last recital. All of the performances have that wonderful Lipatti mix of lightness of touch, delicate shading, but no lack of presence. Great stuff, and H&B lists it in their catalog, if you can't find it at a store.

  • Chopin, Liszt, Ravel recital
    EMI 63038 has some other recordings, including a fine Chopin Sonata #3, a lively Enesco Sonata #3, stirring renditions of Liszt's Sonetto 104 del Petrarca and Ravel's Alborada del gracioso. There are some Brahms waltzes from Op. 39 (with Nadia Boulanger, I think!) thrown in for good measure.

  • Chopin: Waltzes, Barcarolle, et. al.
    EMI 69802 reprises the core of Lipatti's Chopin. It has his studio recording of 14 Waltzes (still my favorite), a gently rocking Op. 60 Barcarolle, a spiky Mazurka in c# Op. 50/3, and an utterly heartbreaking account of the Nocturne Op. 27/2.

  • Concerto performances: Chopin, Schumann, Grieg
    EMI 63497 and 69792 have some of his more important concerto appearances. The former has the Chopin 1st in a Zurich performance with Otto Ackermann (I believe this is the genuine article, not the mis-attributed performance that EMI had issued before) and the Grieg concerto with Alceo Galliera. (Is there a Lipatti/Karajan disc?) The latter has two performances with Herbert von Karajan at the helm, one a studio account of the Schumann, and the other Lipatti's final concerto appearance, in the Mozart 21st, with an original (and interesting) cadenza.

  • Live performances and rarities
    There are a number of other Lipatti items that have been around in the past, but EMI has not seen fit to reissue. There isn't much additional studio material that I know of, apart from a different recording of one of the Chopin waltzes. Mostly it's live stuff. There was a Jecklin CD that had an intriguing account of the Bach 1st concerto in a piano arrangement by Busoni with Eduard van Beinum conducting. It also had the Chopin/Ackermann performance, and some encores, which were in abysmal sound, but included Chopin's "Black Key" etude, the Op. 25/5, and an even more moving Op. 27/2 (almost like communing with the composer's dead spirit, as one friend described it). Deleted a long time ago. There was another Schumann concerto (or was it Grieg) on London for a while, coupled with a Beethoven 4th with Clara Haskil. Monitor had a broadcast of Georges Enesco's Violin Sonata, with his father-in-law, Enesco himself, at the violin. (I only saw that one on LP.) And Pearl GEMM 9994 has the Brahms Op. 29 waltzes, and the Liebeslieder Waltzes with Lipatti and his teacher Nadia Boulanger accompanying a French quintet including Hugues Cuenod. There are also tantalizing reports of a BBC broadcast of Lipatti playing Beethoven: the "Waldstein" sonata, though apparently some idiot erased the master tape. dk has also written here about shellacs in the archives of the Romanian Radio, but I haven't seen anything further come of that.

  • Final recital at Besancon
    Of course, no discussion of Lipatti is complete without a mention of his last recital. As I mentioned above, he died a painful death of lymphoma at a tragically young age. Cortisone injections (expensive before the advent of Mexican yams) kept him going for a while, long enough to give a final concerto appearance (the Mozart 21 at Lucerne) and one final recital, at Besancon in December 1950.

    The program consisted of the Bach Partita #1, the Mozart Sonata #8, the Schubert Impromptus D.899/2 and 3, and 14 Chopin Waltzes. He was in such pain, as I read it, that he had to be practically carried onto the stage. The phenomenal fluency of his studio work isn't always apparent here, but you'd never know from it that he was dying of cancer at the time. He did not have the strength to complete the fourteen waltzes, but reportedly offered Jesu, Joy as an encore. The recital was thought to be lost until some time in the late 60's or so, when an aircheck from a broadcast of the recital was found. EMI only reissued the Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Chopin on LP without the encore, and have reissued it in a 2-LP set (with introductory applause and brief opening warm-up arpeggios) and a French EMI References LP (better sound, no arpeggios, single LP). It was on an EMI CD at one point, but it's only available these days intermittently as an import.

  • Packing it all together: the legacy set
    Finally from EMI, there is CZS 7 67163 2, a 5-CD legacy set. It includes all of the five EMI albums discussed above in a single compact set, in pretty good sound. The only thing missing is the last recital, but that can be obtained separately. The box also contains the extra Chopin encores that were on the Jecklin disc, but the heavenly, live Chopin Nocturne Op. 27/2 was left out.

    • All this was covered in great detail in a series of posts a few months ago here; I gleaned some information from that via a Dejanews search, along with a search of EMI's recordings database and H&B's database. Further contributions would be most welcome, and I hope this helps.

    Dr. Jimbob's Home -> Classical Music -> Pianists -> Dinu Lipatti
    Last updated: October 27, 1999 by James C.S. Liu

    [disclaimer]   [about this page/copyright info]   [back to the top]