In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Dinu Lipatti’s death on December 2, 1950, a collection of commercial and unofficial recordings arranged in a recital format.

My own introduction to Lipatti’s playing came in 1985, when I was in my teens and had just discovered historical piano recordings. That was 35 years after Lipatti died – and now another 35 years have passed. I had no idea when I first saw his name in an Angel Records sampler with the somewhat morbid title, ‘Dinu Lipatti’s Last Recital,’ that I would be as involved with his legacy as I have been. Over the course of the last three decades particularly, I have had several trips to Europe to meet Lipatti’s friends and students, and visited archives and private collections in an attempt to locate and have released rare recordings that showed the fuller capabilities of this great pianist’s artistry than is revealed by the handful of recordings he made for EMI over the course of the last few years of his life.

I had no clue that some of my findings would upturn much of the official narrative. Many of the best-known anecdotes about the pianist – that he wanted three or four years to prepare the Tchaikovsky or Emperor Concertos, that he only played Beethoven Sonatas in the last two years of his life, that he was reluctant to record due to his perfectionism – turned out to be completely false. I still recall how my jaw dropped when, at the EMI archives, I held with my own hands copies of memos signed by his producer Walter Legge that stated Lipatti had agreed in 1948 to record Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in 1949, and that Lipatti himself requested to record a Beethoven Concerto, when Legge was the one who had spread the aforementioned stories of Lipatti’s reticence to record or play these works! Memo after memo revealed that a lack of foresight and bad luck had unfortunately conspired to limit Lipatti’s recorded output to a handful of small-scale works that only hint at the fullness of his interpretative powers. How tragic that he did not record Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata (which he played regularly in the last decade of his life, not just the last two years), or Schumann’s Etudes symphoniques, as he’d requested EMI to do, or Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin – or other shorter works, such as Debussy’s La soirée dans Grenade and Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance, both of which were scheduled to be recorded but for some reason weren’t.

Lipatti often played recitals featuring an array of works from Baroque to 20th century, in chronological sequence, sometimes centred around one main work. The collection here features some of the works he most regularly programmed, in similar groupings: he often paired these two Bach chorales in this order, as well as the first of the two Scarlatti Sonatas presented here (unfortunately a recording of the third usually grouped with these has not been salvaged). One of the central works he often played in these recitals was Chopin’s Third Sonata, which is featured here, grouped with other solo Chopin works as he often did. (Among the other large-scale works that often figured in his recitals were the aforementioned Beethoven Waldstein, Schumann Etudes symphoniques, and Ravel Le tombeau de Couperin.)

He also regularly put together two or three Brahms solo works – I’ve included four as none of these are part of Lipatti’s studio discography and because these particular performances reveal so much of his interpretative genius. It is also unfortunate that we do not have the two works that he most often paired with Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso – Debussy’s La soirée dans Grenade and Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance – but ending with this most vivacious recording of the pianist seemed a fitting end to this tribute recital.

Fortunately even in the last couple of years – well over half a century after the pianist died – new recordings, photographs, and other material have come to light which enable a fuller apprehension of Lipatti and his artistry. Let us hope that more will continue to be found and made available. I am in collaboration with several dedicated Lipatti researchers – his biographer Grigore Bargauanu, Romanian scholars Monica Isacescu and Stefan Costache, and British researcher Orlando Murrin (whose findings the last few years have been groundbreaking) – to continue to locate and publish as much as possible what we can find.

Below the program listing under this paragraph, you will find the ‘recital’ that I have composed based on recordings made by Lipatti between 1941 and 1950, in a variety of circumstances. It is available by audio streaming and on a YouTube upload, both below the track listing. I hope you enjoy the performances and would ask that you consider purchasing the releases that feature them. Details about the published recordings can be found at the bottom of the page.

Dinu Lipatti: A 70th Anniversary Anthology ‘Recital’

Bach-Busoni: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland

Bach-Hess: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring

Scarlatti: Three Sonatas:

G Major K.9

G Minor K.450

D Minor K.14

Chopin:

Sonata No.3 in B Minor Op.58

Waltz No.2 in A-Flat Major Op.34 No.1

Two Etudes: Op.25 No.5 and Op.10 No.5

Liszt:

Two Etudes: La Leggierezza and Gnomenreigen

Brahms:

Intermezzo in E-Flat Major (abbr.) Op.117 No.1

Intermezzo in A Minor (abbr.) Op.116 No.2

Intermezzo in C Major Op.119 No.3

Capriccio in D Minor Op.116 No.7

Ravel: Alborada del Gracioso

The recordings featured:

Bach chorales taken from Opus Kura’s wonderful release of these recordings: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7990304–dinu-lipatti-studio-recordings-in-geneva-july-1950

Scarlatti G minor and G major Sonatas among recent discoveries released on Marston Records: https://www.marstonrecords.com/products/landmarks1

Scarlatti D Minor Sonata, Chopin Sonata, and Chopin Waltz from APR’s new release of Lipatti’s Abbey Road recordings: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8784565–lipatti-the-complete-columbia-recordings-1947-1948

Chopin Etudes transferred by Werner Unger on our 2000 ‘Cornerstones’ tribute CD: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8020233–les-inedits

Two Liszt Etudes from my co-produced set Les Inedits on Unger’s archiphon label, now out of print – Gnomenreigen here featured from new source material. https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8020233–les-inedits

First two Brahms Intermezzi from 1995 and 2000 releases I co-produced with Unger on his archiphon label, now only available digitally: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8020227–dinu-lipatti-cornerstones-1936-1950

Second two Brahms works on Marston Records’ Landmarks of Recorded Pianism Vol.1: https://www.marstonrecords.com/products/landmarks1

Ravel’s Alborada from APR’s new set of Lipatti’s Abbey Road recordings: https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8784565–lipatti-the-complete-columbia-recordings-1947-1948