Great Performers: Dinu Lipatti
Dinu Lipatti has been called 'a pianist's pianist' and his interpretations are widely considered the gold standard. Few have been afforded such veneration by the musical elite: in his lifetime, Backhaus, Cortot, Fischer, Haskil, Schnabel, Boulanger, Honegger, and Toscanini were all great admirers, while today, pianists such as Hough, Bronfman, Ansdnes, Pires, and Grosvenor hold him in the highest esteem.
Read more…Lipatti's life story, as melodramatic as a Hollywood movie script, has fuelled some of the mystique surrounding the pianist. The godson of Romanian composer George Enescu, Dinu Lipatti was born in 1917 and studied under the stern command of Florica Musicescu, who would later teach Radu Lupu. He began training in Paris with Alfred Cortot in 1934, the year after his second-prize win at the Vienna International Music Competition prompted the French pianist to protest his fellow jurors' decision; the great master believed he had nothing to teach his young pupil, whom he called 'a second Horowitz.' Lipatti settled in Switzerland in 1943, teaching in Geneva and touring Europe to great acclaim, but Hodgkin's Disease began to tighten its grip, limiting his activities.
Lipatti began producing discs for EMI's sub-label Columbia in 1947,and a handful of discs issued over the course of a year garnered adulation from the public and critics alike. When he was too ill to travel to London's Abbey Road Studios in 1950, experimental cortisone injections funded by wealthy patrons gave Lipatti enough strength to record some landmark discs on equipment specially sent to Geneva to preserve more of the artist's playing for posterity. At his final concert two months later, Lipatti was too ill to play the final Chopin Waltz he had programmed; he played Bach as a final prayer, ending his career with a performance of the chorale 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.' He died a few months later at the age of 33.
While Lipatti's life story and the effusive praise by the musical cognoscenti are captivating, it is his playing that is most alluring: his studio discs, together with a few precious live recordings painstakingly located by collectors after his death, reveal pianism and music-making of the highest order. Lipatti's comprehensive technique enabled him to voice each musical line with its own distinct timbre, giving his playing orchestral colour and dimension, while his intention to serve each composer's style and vision brought depth and certainty to his interpretations.
Lipatti's Bach has the clarity of a sonic blueprint burnished with a golden touch, his Mozart blends innocence and pathos, and his Schubert (from his last recital) is filled with both melancholy and exuberance. His Chopin is legendary for its nobility and crystalline clarity, while his Grieg and Schumann concertos feature tremendous power and buoyant vitality. In his sole official discs of Liszt and Ravel, Lipatti's transcendent virtuosity synthesizes passion and colour with soaring phrasing and technical prowess.
A model of musical integrity and pianistic mastery, Dinu Lipatti sought to serve not just the composer and his works, but music as a whole - hence Herbert von Karajan's description of his playing as "no longer the sound of the piano, but music in its purest form."