March 19 is the anniversary of Dinu Lipatti’s birth – though as was recently discovered, Romania was using a different calendar at the time, so that date today would in fact be April 1st. Nevertheless, as this day is still the pianist’s official birthday, I thought this might be a good time to create a single page with some updates about Lipatti happenings, including links to some new online media.
A few weeks ago, I uploaded the three solo works that Lipatti had played at his February 7, 1950 Zurich concert that featured the Chopin First Concerto. While it has been popularly (and quite logically) believed that these were encores, quite against convention these three Chopin solos were programmed in the concert and played after intermission. This exemplary transfer from the challenging source material is features these performances complete and in the best possible sound with the available tapes and discs:
Lipatti’s playing had gone through some transformation in the three years since his first Columbia recordings, with more expansive phrasing and a deeper emotional expressiveness. On March 1 and 4, 1947 the pianist would make his only large-scale solo recording at Abbey Road Studios in London, the Chopin B Minor Sonata. The performance was a huge hit, winning the Grand Prix du Disque and being universally acclaimed by critics and amateurs alike. However, most LP transfers of the beautifully recorded 78s have muffled Lipatti’s thoroughly grand playing, restricting his tonal colours and dynamic range. The best issued transfer is still Bryan Crimp’s magnificent work from his APR label 1999 CD featuring the pianist’s complete 1947 Abbey Road recordings: Crimp was able to produce vinyl pressings from the original metal masters, resulting in clean surfaces and full-bodied sound greater than any other transfer thus far released.
The most famous event in Lipatti’s life was his last recital, a September 16, 1950 performance in Besancon that was recorded and broadcast on French radio and eventually released in 1957. Both the event and the recording have become the stuff of legend, the incredible performance being hailed as a classic of the gramophone. While the recording has been regularly reissued, all subsequent releases have been based on the first transfer issued by EMI in 1957. Solstice Records in France has finally gone back to the master broadcast tape to produce what is the best sounding and first complete release of the broadcast, including all spoken announcements, audience noise, and warmup arpeggios played by the pianist (for some reason, EMI released only 2 sets of arpeggios out of the 4). Included in the production is a massive 50-page booklet for which I produced a 3600-word text; additional text and documentation is provided by French radio archivists, and there are many unpublished photos, including some taken during the recital itself. You can order the CD directly from Solstice in France at this link.
A taste of the beautiful warmups before the Schubert, with the rest of the performance taken from the EMI CD – the new Solstice one sounds vastly superior than this:
Amazingly, despite so many years having passed since his death, new Lipatti recordings are being found, with five short works having been released on the Marston Records label’s Volume 1 of Landmarks of Recorded Pianism. Last year in New York, I was in Jed Distler’s studio to record a few episodes of his radio program Between The Keys, and our first episode tells the full story of the discovery of these incredibly precious recordings and provides the only online opportunity to hear a couple of them (two works by Brahms):
Today the next episode will be aired, which will feature some Lipatti performances as well as playing by two other pianists close to my heart, Marcelle Meyer and Jorge Bolet. Check my Hearthis page for an upload that will take place after the broadcast (this posting will later be edited to include the link here).
Two years ago on March 19, for the 100th anniversary of the pianist’s birth, I was a guest on Gary Lemco’s radio program The Music Treasury out of Stanford, California. I uploaded the broadcast to YouTube with relevant photographs and documents to give the tribute a more visual dimension:
Almost 70 years after his death, Dinu Lipatti is still an inspiration to musicians and piano fans, and more is in the works to make his artistry more widely known and available. Stay tuned for more details!