Even though he died in 1950 at just 33, any list of the greatest pianists of the 20th century would have to include Dinu Lipatti. For many years after his death, his almost legendary stature was maintained entirely through a handful of recordings – studio sessions, concerts and radio broadcasts – that added up to a little over three hours of peerless music-making. But over the last two decades, more recordings of Lipatti’s playing have gradually come to light, mostly from the archives of European radio stations; some of which have circulated as bootlegs before being released commercially.
In 2008, EMI (the descendant of the company that had made recordings in London with Lipatti in 1947) issued a seven-disc set that brought together all the original studio sessions with some of the later discovered material. Now, to mark this year’s centenary of Lipatti’s birth, Profil has extended that collection to a dozen discs, which cover the whole of his career. This ranges from performances he gave on piano and (very briefly) on harpsichord in 1936 at the École Normale de Musique in Paris when he was 19 and the Brahms Liebeslieder waltzes he recorded the following year with his teacher Nadia Boulanger, to the last recital at Besançon in September 1950, three months before his death from Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
All the famous performances are here – two versions of the Schumann Piano Concerto, from 1948 and 1950, still as good as any on disc; Mozart’s C major Concerto K467, with Herbert von Karajan conducting, from August 1950, which was the last time Lipatti played a concerto in public; and a wide variety of solo Bach and Chopin, composers who were the mainstays of his recital repertoire. There’s the familiar, but still extraordinary, quicksilver account of Chopin’s B minor Piano Sonata, alongside a flamboyant Barcarolle, two sets of waltzes and various nocturnes. The polish of the playing and the range of colour he finds in the keyboard are consistently breathtaking, but they are never paraded for their own sake, they are simply as the means to an entirely selfless musical end.
The recordings made during the second world war, mostly in Lipatti’s home city of Bucharest, are some of the most fascinating. There’s a whole disc of music by his godfather, George Enescu, including the second piano sonata and two of the violin sonatas, with Lipatti partnering the composer, and an assortment of Lipatti’s own music, including Sonatina for Left Hand and two performances of the rather strange, almost neoclassical Concertino en Style Classique. The account of Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto from 1948 perhaps sounds a little frail; that of Liszt’s First Concerto from the previous year, though, is anything but. Even those who have assiduously collected Lipatti performances will surely find something they haven’t heard before; anyone who has never heard his playing has a unique treat in store.
