Posts Categorized: The Piano Files

The music world has known many very individual artists, whose strong personalities and unique character informed their playing. One such pianist was the regrettably short-lived Polish-born pianist André Tchaikovsky, whose early death at the age of 46 was a serious loss for the musical world, and whose posthumous wishes were as unique and headline-grabbing as his artistry.

The Polish musician was not born with the surname of the famed Russian composer by which he would later be recognized. Born Robert Andrzej Krauthammer in Warsaw on November 1, 1935, the pianist would go through a name change as a young boy when his grandmother attempted to hide his Jewish origins by forging documents such that he would become Andrzej Czajkowski. It was successful for the young boy’s survival (although he and his grandmother were rounded up in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and sent to the Pruszków transit camp, they were released in 1945) – however, his mother would die in Treblinka. While his official bio would state that his father had died, this was not true: his father had, in a sense, died to him when he later disowned his son for wanting to be a musician instead of a doctor or lawyer, leading them to cut all ties.

Czajkowski studied piano at the Lodz State School under Wanda Landowska’s former pupil Emma Altberg before going to Paris to study with the great pedagogue and pianist Lazare-Lévy. He returned to Poland in 1950, studying with Olga Iliwicka-Dąbrowska at the State Music Academy in Sopot and with Stanisław Szpinalski at the State Music Academy in Warsaw. When he placed eighth in the fifth International Chopin Competition in 1955, he went to study with renowned Chopin specialist Stefan Askenase and then won the third prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium the following year.

This upload of a recording from the 1955 Chopin Competition prize winners’ concert, a reading of Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie Op.61 that features lovely tone and attentive phrasing, albeit without the full boldness of touch and tensile strength of phrasing that would become characteristic of his later playing:

Czajkowski would change the spelling of his last name to the more familiar Tchaikovsky and in 1957 got a recording contract with RCA, for whom he would record a series of discs totalling a mere three hours, now finally rereleased in a complete box set for the first time. Unfortunately the Ravel Gaspard de la nuit from his debut disc is pitched sharp on both the LP and the latest CD transfer (it’s unclear if the piano was sharp or if the tape simply ran at the wrong speed). Over the course of 3 years he produced a mere 4 LPs, with a significant amount of material remaining unreleased (and apparently still considered unfit for release at when the CD set was put out early in 2018). Fortunately the released performances are of the highest standard, with stunningly refined musicianship throughout.

One anecdote surrounding his recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.25 with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony on February 15, 1958 is rather amusing. While in rehearsal for the recording, Tchaikovsky made the offhand comment that he had never performed the work in public before, which sent Reiner into a fit of anger: “How dare you record a work with me that you haven’t played!” It clearly didn’t matter that Tchaikovsky was playing brilliantly (or that he could learn a work and play it to perfection instantly) – Reiner was furious and there were fears that the session would be canceled. Fortunately, it was not and they recorded not only that Mozart Concerto but also the Bach Concerto in F Minor BWV 1056 (on the same day), and Tchaikovsky would return within a few years to play Prokofiev’s Concerto No.2 in Chicago under Reiner’s baton.

While a broadcast recording of Tchaikovsky playing that work has not been found, there is film footage of him playing the Third Concerto from around the same time: this April 15, 1962 TV broadcast with the Swedish Radio and Television Orchestra conducted by Sixten Ehrling is absolutely superb, with Tchaikovsky highlighting elements usually played percussively, instead burnishing them and playing with a wonderful fluid tone throughout:

Tchaikovsky’s quirky character would make things challenging for his career. Arthur Rubinstein was a huge supporter and would arrange for Tchaikovsky to be represented by his manager, the legendary Sol Hurok – but Tchaikovsky would find it stifling to be under the wing of such a famous pianist and his management, so he soon left and moved to Europe. There too he would consistently demonstrate erratic behaviour that didn’t particularly endear him to everyone, although those who recognized his genius would tolerate some of his eccentricities. On one occasion when still based in the US, he stated would not play his upcoming concert in Boston unless someone came to tuck him into his hotel bed (this is not a euphemism for anything less innocent than it sounds – that was literally all he wanted). Hurok’s office did indeed get someone on a train to go to his hotel to do that. (When one considers that he lost his mother so young and was living the career that led to a separation from his father, his request is in fact rather sad and moving.)

On a later occasion in London in the early 1970s, a manager’s assistant found Tchaikovsky about to leave the hall at which he was scheduled to give a BBC broadcast ten minutes before the start time. She thought he was heading out for a cigarette, but when she approached him, he smiled rather innocently while saying sort of sweetly, “I’m going home. I can’t play this concert.” The assistant and André’s secretary were busily wringing their handkerchiefs to shreds while trying to talk some sense into him, and while the assistant can no longer remember what she said to convince him to stay and play, she was successful. Such eccentricity was borne out of a deep-seated desire to do his best, which led him to want to play fewer concerts than management sometimes desired: he got into a rather sharply-worded disagreement with his London manager, who wanted him to play more concerts, but Tchaikovsky would not budge on the numbers.

He was always concerned about the validity of his interpretations, and his April 23, 1972 Queen Elizabeth Hall concert reveals to what extent. He had programmed Bartok’s Out of Doors Suite and told his friend and colleague Radu Lupu, who planned to attend the recital, that the concert started 30 minutes later than it actually did because he knew that Lupu was familiar with the work and didn’t want him to be present when he played it (it was the first piece on the program). He also asked for the house lights to be dimmed lower than usual so that no one would be able to follow with a score had they brought one with them. Below is an upload of that performance (audio courtesy of the andretchaikovsky.com website), one of only two extant recordings of the pianist playing Bartok – despite his concerns, Tchaikovsky played with tremendous musicality and authority, demonstrating the clarity of texture, rhythmic vitality, mindful shaping of phrases, intelligent balance of voices, and rich array of tonal colours that made his playing so distinctive. Even with the massive fortissimo of the opening, his playing is not tonally harsh.

One of the signs of a great performer is being able to make one hear familiar music as if for the first time without distorting it by doing something ‘new’ or ‘different’ just for the sake of it. Tchaikovsky’s 1974 reading of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – a work he didn’t record commercially (in fact, he recorded not a single work by the composer) – is a performance that points to this capacity. The playing throughout the work is superb, but it is particularly that famous 18th variation that is thoroughly remarkable: usually the pianist plays the variation softly and tenderly before the orchestra comes in with more passion and at a louder volume – but Tchaikovsky had the orchestra sustain the lower dynamics with a gentler treatment of the beautiful melody, which is absolutely mesmerizing and musically very effective. (It was not just on this occasion that he did this – a broadcast recording from two years earlier features the same treatment of this variation.) That variation begins at 15:07 below, with the orchestra entering at 16:08 (though of course the entire performance should be heard).

At the same concert as the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody, he played the Ravel Concerto for Left Hand, another work he had not recorded commercially (his first commercial LP featured Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit), and his refinement and precision were ideally suited to the composer’s music. This performance too features staggering musicianship, revealing Tchaikovsky’s tremendous power at the keyboard and the depth of his musical mind, with wonderfully spacious phrasing, beautifully forged lines, and magnificent tonal and dynamic nuancing. Apparently the pianist stated that his greatest challenge with the work was knowing what to do with his right hand and on at least one occasion wore a sling for his right arm!

Tchaikovsky had a broad repertoire yet unfortunately recorded very little for posterity. In addition to his four discs for RCA in the late 1950s, he recorded a series of records for Columbia in Europe in the 1960s, several of which would remain unreleased. He did not record any Beethoven, however, despite the depth that his burnished yet powerful sound, shaping of his phrasing, and clarity of textures could bring to the composer’s music. This October 12, 1976 broadcast recording of the Sonata No.31 in A-Flat Major Op.110 is remarkable for its exquisite singing tone, soaring yet fluid phrasing, and the magnificent interplay between lines in the left and right hands, along with the brilliant manner in which he highlights primary and secondary subjects. To think that if it were not for an existing radio broadcast and the internet, this recording would likely be lost!

Tchaikovsky would sadly leave us at too young an age: on June 26, 1982 he succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of 46. In death he was as eccentric as in life: he requested that his skull be bequeathed to the Royal Shakespeare Society for use on stage in their productions. Indeed, he finally did take on his role as the late Yorrick in a production of Hamlet (with David Tenant in the title role) but the controversy around the use of a real skull led to its no longer being used. Fortunately, however, the pianist’s musicality is still centre stage for music lovers: his complete RCA discography is available for the first time in a complete set, and a selection of wonderful broadcast performances is available on a superb disc on the great Meloclassic label, and he was the subject of a 2015 documentary (which I have regrettably not yet been able to see) – it is certainly to be hoped that more performances by this great artist will become available. Those wishing to explore more of this great pianist should investigate the superb memorial website andretchaikowsky.com, which is a model website for its comprehensive presentation of the pianist’s life and art, with every available extant recording being available for streaming (the broadcast recordings presented here derive from their sources), along with concert programs and other memorabilia – deep gratitude to those who are so admirably preserving his memory.

Many thanks to Laura Miner for sharing her recollections of Tchaikovsky from her time working with him in the 1970s. 

Below is a broadcast of The Music Treasury from June 17, 2018, in which the host Gary Lemco and I present a number of commercial and broadcast recordings of a wide range of repertoire from Bach to Prokofiev (including a couple of the performances linked in this blog post).

 

 

One of the misperceptions about Dinu Lipatti is that he had a small repertoire. Because he only recorded two piano concertos for EMI – Schumann and Grieg’s sole concertos, both in A Minor – and because (inaccurate) stories circulated that he required three and four years respectively to prepare the Tchaikovsky and Emperor Concertos (absolutely not true – details in the Prince of Pianists article), there is the idea that he played very few concerted works. But before his death at the age of 33, Lipatti had in fact publicly performed twenty-three works for piano and orchestra (including works not classified as concertos, like Stravinsky’s Capriccio) and had a larger private repertoire that included works like Ravel’s Left-Hand Concerto – his copy of the score at the Geneva Conservatory is laced with fingerings from his student days in Paris in the 1930s. (He was in fact scheduled to record the Bartok Third with Karajan and the Philharmonia in November 1949, but the session was canceled due to Lipatti’s inability to travel to London).

Hints of hidden treasure
I first heard of his having played the Bartok Third Concerto when reading in the late 1980s a commemorative text written by his student Jacques Chapuis in one of the memorial books published by Labor et Fides (available here), in which he spoke about Lipatti’s premiering the work with Ansermet at a concert for which the orchestral scores had arrived the day of the concert (this was in fact the Swiss premiere of the work, not the world or European premieres, and took place in November 1947). Of course the thought of Lipatti performing a modern work from the standard repertoire was enthralling to say the least. I wondered if a broadcast might exist of this performance. And so the search began.

I was all the more motivated when reading through Judith Oringer’s book ‘Passion For Piano’, where in the section of recommended performers for different composers, she had in the Bartok section ‘Any recordings by the Rumanian pianist Dinu Lipatti or the Hungarian Gyorgy Sandor.’ I was stunned, as few people knew that Lipatti had played the Bartok and certainly none of the well-connected collectors that I knew had heard a recording of Lipatti playing anything by the Hungarian composer – and this included Gregor Benko (president of the International Piano Archives) and a number of European record collectors. (Oringer, in response to an inquiry while this article was in preparation, stated that she cannot recall how she heard of Lipatti’s name in relation to any recordings of Bartok compositions.)

In late 1989, I obtained a copy of Lipatti’s biography, a somewhat poorly translated effort of the Romanian original by Grigore Bargauanu and Dragos Tanasescu, and the back section of the discography listed a recording of Lipatti performing the Bartok Third Concerto in May 1948 with the Südwestfunk Orchestra conducted by Paul Sacher. There was a note that stated ‘The recording was never issued because the conductor did not consider it satisfactory.’ I stared at the page in disbelief: even if the conductor was not satisfied, if the recording was known to exist, how is it that even well-connected collectors didn’t have a copy?

Detective work
In these days before the internet, it wasn’t as easy to track down people and information. The first order of business was to contact the Südwestfunk – so I called up the German consulate and obtained the address (that’s what one did in the days before Google). I wrote to the SWF with the information I had from the biography, and waited. Three months later, I received a sheet of paper in the mail that had my address on it, a return address at the Südwestfunk, and some stamps on it – and nothing else. It appeared to be the label of a package, but the package was gone! I went to the local post office but they agreed that it looked as though it was a label that had come off a package. We filled out a form to hunt for the lost package, but they were not optimistic.

As there was a name on the return address, I called the radio station the next day (having obtained the number from the consulate) and spoke with that woman – she didn’t speak English, my German was basic, but we soon figured out that we both spoke French. “Oh yes, we sent you the recording,” she informed me. Well, it hadn’t arrived. I was devastated. I didn’t get the impression that they could be counted on to send me another copy, but I told her I was planning to go to Europe a few months later, and she invited me to stop by to see her at the station to obtain a copy.

And so I did. After a few days in Paris, I went directly to Baden-Baden, home of various spas and a radio station where Lipatti had performed Bartok’s Third Concerto 42 years earlier. It took a while to figure out how to get to the Südwestfunk by public transport, and by the time I got there, it was getting late in the day – and it was a Friday afternoon, so I was concerned about being too late at the end of the work week. It took a bit of running around from one building to the next to find my contact – despite their reputation for being organized, no one seemed to know where I should go, and after my bad luck with the lost package, I was worried at the prospect of not getting the tape. But finally, sweaty in the May heat, I met the lady whom I had spoken to on the phone some months before and she kindly handed me a cassette – letting me know, however, that for copyright reasons, a gap of a second or two had been inserted in each movement to prevent the recording from being illicitly issued.

Hands on
After leaving the SWF on the bus, I listened excitedly to the tape on a basic Walkman and was surprised by the performance – not in the way that I’d expected. It was a much slower performance than usual – the first movement lacked the frenetic momentum that one usually heard – and the orchestral playing wasn’t quite together. Additionally, there were some electronic bleeps midway through the first movement. The second movement, however, revealed Lipatti at his best – transparent chordal playing, beautiful voice-leading – and the third movement had beautifully layered voicing in the fugue, just like Lipatti’s legendary Bach. The unmastered sound quality was perhaps the best of all discovered Lipatti broadcast concerto performances, being the only one recorded on professional equipment.

I visited London a few weeks later and went to EMI’s headquarters, having been introduced by Bryan Crimp of the APR label. Charles Rodier, the legal man, was very kind and gracious and introduced me to Ken Jagger, who was in charge of historical releases. He asked if I could leave them a copy of the cassette so that the team could listen to it more attentively, and said they would be in touch with me.

A year later, I visited Europe again, and London was my first stop. I phoned up EMI and asked Mr. Jagger what they had decided about the Bartok. He appeared a bit flustered and asked me if I would mind calling back in a few days once he had the time to review the situation with his colleagues (in other words, he had completely forgotten). When I did call back, he stated that they found the playing substandard and that it would be a disservice to Lipatti to issue the recording.

First attempts
That same visit, I went to the EMI archives in Hayes with Bryan Crimp and came across correspondance that gave more background into the label’s history with this recording. It seems that in the 1960s, Lipatti’s producer Walter Legge was alerted to the existence of this Bartok recording while he was looking into another broadcast recording, that of the Chopin E Minor Concerto (described in more detail here). On July 4, 1963 Legge wrote to the German branch of EMI, the Electrola Gesellschaft mbH, to see if they could obtain the recording “from Frankfurt Radio they have under number 52 A 913 (Lautarchiv) M381/II + III (Baden-Baden) and Bela Bartok: Konzert nr 3 fur Klavier und Orchester Dinu Lipatti Südwestfunk-Orchester, dir: Paul Sacher (26’05”). I shall be most grateful if you can induce them to let you make a copy tape of this recording and if you will send it to us with a view to publishing it in disc form. I shall have no difficulty in obtaining permission from Lipatti’s widow or from the conductor.”

Famous last words. It took six months to get a tape – Lipatti’s widow Madeleine and conductor Paul Sacher had to send letters of consent for the radio stations to provide EMI with a copy, though Madeleine reported (in French) in a letter dated October 17, 1963 that “Paul Sacher believes that the recording will not be satisfactory and wishes to hear the tape.” When a tape did arrive, it was marred by the same electronic bleeps found on the cassette in 1990. Peter de Jongh wrote on June 3, 1964 that he had left a laquer (pressing) with Michael Allen of EMI and that in his opinion, “the performance by Lipatti is of the greatest interest. His incomparable musicianship, touch and vitality are all there.” On July 28, 1964, H.R. Stracke of Electrola wrote that “on principle, the orchestra agrees with the release. Price: DM 4.500, — provided that the regeneration (sic) is acceptable.” By October 13, the costs had been tallied as DM 4500 for the orchestra, DM 1560 for Boosey and Hawkes (DM 60 per minute), and DM 100 for the tape; by February 25, 1965, the radio station had asked for DM 2500 for the tape. On September 27, 1965, Dr Strojohann of Electrola wrote that “We have to guarantee the Baden-Baden Radio Station not to use the name of the Baden-Baden orchestra. It has to be “Ein Symphonie-Orchester” or “GroBes Symphonie-Orchester” or “Orchestra cond. Paul Sacher”.” That became a moot point: an undated handwritten note at the bottom of the memo says ‘Tape considered unsatisfactory for issue.’

The matter was picked up again in 1970, but David Mottley of EMI wrote in a memo dated October 12, “Having listened to the tape of Lipatti playing Bartok’s 3rd Piano Concerto, I do not think it would be in the interests of anybody to attempt to issue this recording on disc. Not only is the reproduction quality very poor indeed but also the playing of the orchestra is of a low standard generally. Christopher Parker also confirms that there is nothing that can be done to improve the quality of sound on this tape.”

Back to the future
Fast-forward to 1991. EMI has once again, through Ken Jagger, issued the same opinion. Then, in 1992-1993, I introduced the Lipatti fan and collector Dr Marc Gertsch of Bern to Werner Unger of the German historical recordings label ‘archiphon’. Gertsch presented enough private Lipatti material to issue a two-disc set, and so the matter of the Bartok Concerto was raised again. In an attempt to force Sacher’s hand, we had a colleague request the Südwestfunk to broadcast the recording, in the hopes that he would consent to an authorized release once the tape began to circulate privately in order to prevent an illicit release. He didn’t budge, though he did say that he would approve of issuing the second movement, as that was very beautiful. And so that movement was issued on a set entitled ‘Dinu Lipatti: Les Inedits’ . (This set has some items not released elsewhere and is currently available on iTunes here).

In May 1999, I was at the airport in Tokyo en route to Thailand when I read in Time magazine that Paul Sacher had died. I wondered how long it would take for the Bartok to come out, as it was more than 50 years after the performance and was therefore in the public domain. Not long later, the Italian label Urania issued the complete concerto – complete with the electronic bleeps that had marred the first movement. (The previous summer, Werner Unger and I had edited out the bleeps quite easily on a computer program.)

In 2000, I was focused on producing a memorial edition for the 50th anniversary of Lipatti’s death. Unger and I approached EMI and offered them a remastering we had made of Lipatti’s Chopin Concerto performance which was far superior to anything issued by the label (we had access to Gertsch’s original tape, which EMI had not touched since 1981). They declined, stating that they were satisfied with what they had, and they gave us permission to issue it ourselves. I suggested Unger ask EMI what they were doing for the Lipatti anniversary – and the response was something along the lines of, ‘Um… what do you suggest?’ They had neglected to prepare a commemorative release for this universally loved and best-selling artist. I proposed that they issue the Bach-Busoni D Minor, Liszt E-Flat, and Bartok Third concertos on a single CD – something I had suggested back in 1991 shortly after learning of the existence of the Liszt Concerto in Dr. Gertsch’s collection. Now they finally agreed. When I wrote to them to ask about contributing the liner notes, they wrote back that they had already assigned it to one of their writers but ‘Thank you for your interest in our project.’

[A side note: for a commorative issue, Unger and I had hoped to issue the Chopin Concerto – from 1950 – with three radio interviews from the same year, but Tahra issued two of the three interviews, so we opted instead to produce a release that spanned the whole of Lipatti’s recording career, from 1936 to 1950: ‘Cornerstones’. Like the previous archiphon set, this release has some otherwise unissued Lipatti recordings and is available on iTunes here.]

In early 2001, EMI’s release of three concert performances by Dinu Lipatti of piano concertos that he had not officially recorded and spanning three centuries of the repertoire was finally made available to the general public. (Available on iTunes here and on CD via Amazon here, as well as in this 7-disc set of his EMI recordings.) Critical acclaim of the performances was immediate – no one felt that the substandard orchestral support in the Bartok was an issue, and EMI used the edited version of the tape that Unger and I had prepared so that the bleeps were not an issue. (Unfortunately, the sound of the issued disc is worse than the masters we provided them, particularly in the Bach-Busoni and Liszt.)

In 2015 I visited Dr. Unger again and he had by then obtained two more sources of this performance: 78rpm and 33rpm shellac pressings that had been made for Madeleine Lipatti in 1954 – well before EMI documentation referred to the existence of the recording. In the collection of discs – which were sourced from the late Dr. Gertsch’s archive (why these were not made available to us in the 1990s is unclear) – was another set of 33rpm and 78rpm shellac pressings of another Lipatti performance, his own Concertino in Classical Style that we had issued in that mid-1990s Les Inédits set. The writing on the label and sleeves indicated that this performance was also with Paul Sacher and the SWF Orchestra from a May 30, 1948 performance. It therefore appears that Lipatti played both works at the same performance. So far we have not obtained a concert programme to confirm that this is the case, but this is what the pressings indicated.

The performance
As to the Bartok performance itself: Lipatti takes the first movement at a slower rate than Bartok’s metronome markings, and as can be seen in this photograph from his own score of the work, he adjusted the marking from 88 to 76. While Lipatti is seen as having considered the text as sacrosanct, the fact is that the energy of the composition took priority, and a number of musicologists have spoken to Bartok’s tempo indications often being too fast. His slower pace in this movement highlights the melancholic experience the composer was going through as he wrote this work. Lipatti phrases fluidly rather than frenetically, emphasizing the lyrical and harmonic rather than the overtly rhythmic.

The second movement is one of the most profoundly moving examples of Lipatti’s art. His voicing in the chorale is sublime: every chord is weighted such that primary and inner tones ring in perfect balance, each successive collection of tone clusters resonating at its own particular vibration, fading seamlessly into its successor. Never have both the vertical and horizontal lines of this chorale been so flawlessly executed. The middle section of the movement is beautifully played (it is eerily like the middle section of the third movement (of four) of Lipatti’s own Concertino in Classical Style), and builds magically to the final cadenza of the movement, which Lipatti plays with tremendous force: again, he voices with incredible attention, observing the composer’s pedal markings meticulously so that certain chords create a sonic envelope in which others are found.

The third movement, while suffering from some sloppy orchestral ensemble, features magically transparent voicing from Lipatti (particularly in the fugue, from 19:16 to 20:17), incredible accenting, amazing pedaling, and fantastic tonal effects. While the pianist may have been held back somewhat by the rather unskilled accompaniment, he nevertheless gives a thoroughly profound performance.

It is incredible to consider how we now have such easy access to a recording that was once unknown and considered the stuff of legend. Technology now enables music lovers the world over to listen to a performance that may well have lain dormant in the archives. May this recording serve to give more insight into Lipatti’s art, and may other lost recordings be added to his discography.

Bartok Piano Concerto No.3
Dinu Lipatti, piano
SWF Symphony Orchestra
Paul Sacher, conductor
May 30, 1948

 

This is a revised form of an article that was published in the Summer 1999 edition of International Piano Quarterly. It has been updated with information that has since come to light.

Dinu Lipatti is one of the most mystical of pianists, yet over a half century after his premature death, most pianophiles know little more than the sketchy biographical information published with the frequent reissues of his critically lauded recordings. He received no more than a parenthetical mention in the classic tome The Great Pianists, Harold C. Schonberg’s only comment being that “his death in 1950 at the age of 33 took away a pianist who would have been one of the major figures of the century.” Such observations overlook the fact that before his death, Lipatti was already considered one of the greatest pianists and musicians to have graced the concert stage.

Exploding the Myth
Stories about the dramatic nature of his suffering at the hands of leukemia have often overshadowed his uniquely profound musicianship. Dinu Lipatti was in fact a far more modern, revolutionary, and dynamic pianist than his ill health or the limited scope of his few recordings would indicate. He is still generally thought of as a Bach-Mozart-Chopin pianist, yet his repertoire ranged from Bach to Bartok, Scarlatti to Stravinski, and he publicly performed some 23 works for piano and orchestra. A champion of modern music (he was a talented and successful composer himself), as a student he performed concerts of Rumanian music in 1930s Paris with the likes of Szigeti and Enescu, and he gave the Swiss premiere of the Bartok Third Concerto with Ansermet (the orchestral scores arrived the day of the concert, and by all accounts it was a stellar performance). If his sickness prevented him from concertizing overseas (Malcuzynski was his last-minute replacement on a three-month Australian tour in 1949), Lipatti did perform all over Europe, from London to Bratislava and Helsinki to Rome, under conductors as varied as Abendroth, Ackermann, Ansermet, van Beinum, Bigot, Boehm, Hindemith, Karajan, Mengelberg, Munch, Sacher, and Scherchen.

Unique programmes
Despite his overall physical weakness, Lipatti’s endurance on stage could be phenomenal, and his unorthodox programming indicates that he was not quite the frail, overly cautious purist many believe him to have been. What pianist today plays two concertos per concert? In his late teens in Bucharest Lipatti played the Mozart D Minor Concerto with Stravinski’s Capriccio (the critic felt that his playing was more suited to the Stravinski than to the Mozart!), and in his later years he coupled the Liszt E Flat Concerto with either the Mozart D Minor, Martin Ballade, or Chopin Andante Spianato and Polonaise, and would pair the Bach-Busoni D Minor or Haydn D Major Concertos with the Ravel G Major Concerto – what incredible juxtapositions of style! He created a stir when, at the 1947 Lucerne Festival under Hindemith’s baton, he performed the Mozart D Minor Concerto with Beethoven’s cadenza; while the concert was viewed as the highlight of the festival, Lipatti was accused of having written the “evil and anachronistic cadenza.”

His solo programmes were equally bold and varied. He performed in one recital four Preludes and Fugues of Bach, Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques, and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. One 1947 Chopin recital was a heroic survey of the composer’s works: 6 Preludes, 3 Etudes, Sonata Op.58, Ballade op.52, Mazurka Op.50 No.3, Scherzo Op.20, Nocturne Op.27 No.2, Waltz Op.34 No.1, and Polonaise Op.22. At other times, his recitals focused on one large-scale work, such as the Waldstein, Chopin B Minor Sonata, or the Etudes Symphoniques, the rest of the programme being a historical progression of smaller-scale compositions from Bach through Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, and through to modern composers like Debussy, Ravel, de Falla, and Enescu.

Fact vs. Fiction
If Lipatti’s career and repertoire were more expansive than has previously been believed, it should also be noted that some of the most famous anecdotes regarding his recordings and repertoire are completely false.

Myth No.1: Lipatti would not record the Tchaikovsky Concerto unless he had three years to prepare it, and he would require four years for the Emperor Concerto.

Fact: An internal memo from Lipatti’s recording producer, the legendary Walter Legge, dated February 23, 1948 says that “Lipatti has his heart set on doing a Beethoven Concerto in 1949” and proposes a recording of the Emperor (which Lipatti had performed twice in Bucharest in the 1940-41 season); another dated June 7, 1948, addressing a proposed Tchaikovsky Concerto recording for Columbia, finds Legge presenting “the ideal solution for this problem. Lipatti has agreed to record this work in 1949 in London with Karajan.” (This was eventually shot down in favour of a recording with Malcuzynski.)

Myth No.2: Lipatti agreed to play the Beethoven Waldstein Sonata within the last two years of his life at Artur Schnabel’s suggestion when Legge introduced the two pianists.

Fact: Lipatti had performed the Waldstein regularly since 1935, making the first of many broadcasts of the work the following year, and he knew Schnabel well before he met Legge. (It was Edwin Fischer who, in 1943, taught Lipatti “the daring way in which Beethoven indicated the use of the forte pedal” in the last movement.)

Accolades from the musical elite
The extraordinary clarity of his playing and the probing musicality of his interpretations earned Lipatti the recognition and admiration of the musical luminaries of his time. Pianists such as Backhaus, Cortot, Fischer, Haskil, Kempff, and Schnabel were friends and supporters, as were musicians from other fields in music – Ansermet, Boulanger, Cuenod, Dukas, Enescu, Honegger, Markevich, Menuhin, Munch, Poulenc, Toscanini… Cortot, noting Lipatti’s “exceptional gifts,” called him “a real revelation on the horizon of pianists,” writing on his death, “There was nothing to teach you. One could, in fact, only learn from you.” When Frank Martin first heard Lipatti play, he “felt that something unusual was happening, that I had never heard the piano played like this.” Poulenc labeled him an “artist of Divine spirituality,” and Honegger said that he was “above all a musician and, secondly, a pianist.” Karajan described his playing as “no longer the sound of the piano, but music in its purest form.”

No less than Toscanini became a great admirer upon hearing Lipatti in the Chopin E Minor Concerto at La Scala in 1946, first in rehearsal – Lipatti had asked the maestro if he would offer some “severe criticism, which he readily agreed to do,” (oddly enough) – and then in concert, proclaiming “At last we have a Chopin sans caprices and with the rubato to my liking.” They developed quite a friendship, with Dinu and Madeleine being extended a rare invitation to attend his rehearsals (“these were rare moments of joy and encouragement for me,” wrote Dinu), and they spent more time together later in Lucerne.

Colleagues and admirers
The high esteem in which Lipatti was held by many great pianists is a true testimony to his artistry. He had met Edwin Fischer when he was a student in Paris, and was offered assistance any time he should visit Berlin; years later in Switzerland, they would meet and play for each other whenever they could. Clara Haskil, with whom he became lifelong friends, wrote “you are a very great artist and soon all your famous colleagues will be put in the shade by you.” Artur Schnabel declared that Lipatti’s playing was “an entirely new way of playing the piano” and attended several of his concerts. He was devastated by his death, writing of “a very real and personal loss. I admired and liked that boy immensely… He was one of the most attractive personalities I have known in my life.”

He was obviously an extremely congenial individual and a musician of tremendous capabilities, and his playing has continued to captivate listeners through the widespread release of his commercial and live recordings. Biographical information provides a fascinating look at his formative influences and his achievements, and hitherto-unpublished information regarding his recording career and analysis of his pianistic approach cast new light on this most unique musician and his artistry.

Early studies and beyond
There was never any doubt that Dinu Lipatti would devote his life to music. His proud, musical parents picked up on his natural talent right away, and with Georges Enescu as his godfather, his environment catered to his calling. Born March 19, 1917 in Bucharest, Rumania, young Dinu (Constantin was his birth name) started studying piano with his mother at the age of four and was soon composing evocative descriptions of family members. At eight he was under the supervision of local legend Mihail Jora, and he was eleven when he entered the class of Florica Musicescu at the Bucharest Academy.

While much has been made of Lipatti’s later studies with Cortot, that the French master felt that he had nothing to teach him was undoubtedly due to the thoroughness with which Musicescu instilled in Lipatti a monumentally comprehensive technique, an unrelenting critical ear, and deep understanding of his responsibility as a performing artist. The teacher of other fine pianists such as Radu Lupu and the nearly forgotten Mindru Katz, Musicescu was apparently somewhat of a tyrant, and if Lipatti occasionally went home in tears, his respect for and faith in his teacher were undying. He remained in contact with her for his entire life.

An unusual win
By the time he entered the 1933 Vienna International Music Competition at the age of 16, he had performed the Grieg, Chopin E Minor, and Liszt E-Flat Major Concertos to great acclaim. Rumanian critics were already pinpointing the very qualities for which Lipatti’s playing continues to move listeners today, noting that he was “endowed not only with a splendid technique, but also with spiritual qualities, a fine grasp of the works performed, and a great desire to achieve the correct interpretation.” His participation in the competition would, rather backhandedly, prove to be a launching pad for his career.

The distinguished jury was a who’s-who of the piano world, including Arrau, Backhaus, Cortot, de Greef, Dohnanyi, Erdmann, Friedman, Gieseking, Hess, Landowska, Michalowski, Ney, Phillipp, Rachmaninoff, Rosenthal, and von Sauer. In the final round, it was a toss-up between Lipatti and Poland’s Boleslav Kon; because the latter would soon be beyond the age limit for competitions (and as Lipatti was so young), he was awarded first prize, and Lipatti tied for second with the USSR’s Mykyscha Taras. (Other finalists included Gina Bachauer and Gyorgyi Sandor.) Cortot was indignant about the use of non-musical criteria in the decision-making process, and is reported to have resigned from the jury in protest (this is, in fact, not clear, but his vocal objection certainly is). When given the choice between attending the awards ceremony or a recital given by Cortot the same evening, Lipatti opted for the recital, nevertheless reporting with characteristic modesty that the first prize “went to a Pole who possessed great experience, assurance, and calm.”

Paris in the ‘30s
It was not until the fall of 1934, after another year of studying and performing in Bucharest, that Lipatti moved to Paris – possibly not at Cortot’s invitation but at the suggestion of his mother, who went with him. When Lipatti did go to play for Cortot at the Ecole Normale de Musique, he was immediately recognized and invited to study piano with Cortot and his assistant Yvonne Lefebure, and composition with Paul Dukas. He would later study conducting with Charles Munch, and after Dukas’ death his composition teacher was Nadia Boulanger, who became his “spiritual mother.” (Like Musicescu, she too was capable of acts of tyranny, and years later, when she continued to reduce students to tears by having them play Bach fugues with the parts reversed, it was reported that only Lipatti had done so successfully.)

Lipatti enjoyed a prosperous period of study and performing, being invited to the musical salons and concertizing successfully in Paris and nearby European cities. Critics did not know “what to praise most, his technical mastery or his profound musical understanding.” Lipatti’s elegantly-phrased reviews of concerts by Horowitz, von Sauer, Kreisler, and others, published in Rumania’s Libertatea, reveal his acute sensibility and awareness regarding the changing direction of musical performance (“today we witness a tendency towards absolute technical perfection devoid of any sensitivity or elan”) and the influence of “public opinion, which remains eternally superficial, dependent on trends made fashionable by snobbery and publicity.”

The winds of war

At the outbreak of the war, Lipatti returned to Rumania, and continued to enjoy a career as a soloist (he performed the Liszt First Concerto with Mengelberg) in addition to beginning a two-piano partnership with his future wife, Madeleine Cantacuzene. Concerts were given in destinations such as Bratislava, Sofia, Vienna, Berlin (where “severe characters dressed in black… barely raised their eyebrows when they smiled – I liked them”), and Rome. While he wrote of a tour in March 1943 that was to find him performing throughout Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany with the likes of Abendroth and Boehm, he apparently did not go – concert programs exist for performances he made at that time in Rumania. (Friedrich Wuehrer performed on at least one of the scheduled occasions.)

On September 4, 1943, Lipatti left Rumania with Madeleine, provisionally on a ten-day tour, and never returned. After a blown engine led to an emergency landing in Hungary, he traveled to Vienna, Stockholm, and Helsinki before giving a tour of Switzerland, enjoying such unprecedented success that he remained for some time in Switzerland. The following year, Lipatti was offered an honorary professorship at the Geneva Conservatory; although some “colleagues” had lodged a protest based on political ideologies, Lipatti was supported by Ansermet, Martin, and others, and in April 1944 he began his role as professor of the Classe de Virtuosite, a position he held for five years.

A mysterious illness
It was shortly after his arrival in Switzerland that the first signs of a mysterious illness appeared. It started out as a persistent fever, and after some time he was treated with X-ray therapy. He remained in precarious health for the rest of his life (he had been somewhat weak since childhood and as such his general education had taken place at home), and baffled doctors, in their desperate attempts to find a solution, administered esoteric treatments that brought about serious side effects. Around the time of his Columbia recordings he underwent mustard-gas injections, which caused such immense swelling in his left arm that his suits needed altering to hide the disfiguration; Lipatti joked that he could now produce “such formidable sonorities in the bass that even Miss Musicescu would be satisfied!” He had only one working lung (“my lung of existence”), and by 1947 had been diagnosed with lymphogranulomatosis, a form of leukemia known as Hodgkin’s Disease.

Despite frequent cancellations caused by ill health, Lipatti concertized throughout Europe in halls packed with audiences who had heard talk of a pianist who brought unimaginable depth to his interpretations. The musical world outside of Europe began to learn of Lipatti when the release of his Columbia recordings started in 1947. The Schumann Concerto was particularly well-received (even if Lipatti wasn’t too happy with the “super-classical” Karajan’s tempi), but about a month after it was recorded in April 1948, Lipatti fell gravely ill and for a year and a half gave only a handful of concerts. He was having weekly blood transfusions, and in 1949 was forced to abandon his teaching post. He prepared a “less tiring programme” (Bach Partita No.1, Mozart Sonata No.8, 2 Schubert Impromptus, and the Chopin Waltzes) and dropped grander works from his repertoire in order to conserve his strength. Admirers held onto their tickets in the hope that he would appear despite official cancellations. By the end of 1949 Lipatti was performing more, albeit sporadically, continuing to mesmerize audiences with what one contemporary referred to as “a different kind of expression.”

A ray of hope

In the Autumn of 1949, Lipatti’s friend and colleague Paul Sacher and his wife heard of the success of cortisone treatment in America and, when the Swiss doctors gave their approval several months later, obtained the very best pure leaf extract (at the then-exorbitant cost of eighteen pounds a day) with the help of other Lipatti admirers. The success was startling: “Just think of it, I’m still marvelously well,” he wrote his benefactors. “It’s an unheard-of feeling.” Recording equipment was sent to Geneva to capture Lipatti’s playing as he enjoyed an unprecedented remission and return to vitality.

But after this brief flash of optimism, his condition deteriorated (doctors had dared give the injections for no more than a month) and he gave only two more concerts, performing the Mozart Concerto K.467 in Lucerne with Karajan and a final solo recital in the small French town of Besancon, both of which were recorded and posthumously issued. The most famous story of Lipatti’s career, sadly, is the fact that he was too weak to perform the last of the fourteen Chopin Waltzes he had programmed; after a brief absence from the stage he played “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” instead, as a final offering.

Dinu Lipatti died on December 2, 1950 – not of the leukemia which had plagued him for years, nor from the various medical treatments which had ravaged his body, but because an abscess on his one working lung, having gone unnoticed by his doctor that very day, burst. He was 33 years old.

The recordings
Lipatti’s international renown and reputation today come, for the most part, from his incredible EMI recordings, and it is a virtually unknown fact that this association almost never came to be. In January 1946 one Sidney Beer was in Switzerland signing artists to Decca, and Dinu Lipatti was at the top of his list (which also included Furtwaengler, Richard Strauss, and Backhaus). Decca hoped to organize a tour for Lipatti, and over a two-month period “make a large number of recordings. It [was] proposed to record piano concertos of Chopin and other composers.” When EMI learned of this, they quickly intervened (they had not followed through on a previous offer to Lipatti) and won the artist to their Columbia sub label. After his first failed recording session in Zurich (a new material the company was experimenting with resulted in noisy surfaces), Lipatti would go to London three times to record before his final sessions in Geneva.

The few recordings Lipatti did make for Columbia (totaling about 3 1/2 hours) are of remarkable musicianship and interpretative depth, and that we do not have more is due not only to cancellations brought about by Lipatti’s sickness, but also to an overall lack of foresight regarding the seriousness of his condition and the great importance of capturing a comprehensive cross-section of his repertoire on disc. It has already been shown how Lipatti was prepared to record the Emperor Concerto and the Tchaikovsky Concerto, despite stories indicating otherwise. Other recordings which had been proposed (and in one case, made) are mouth-watering to be sure.

Lost opportunities

An “Instructions for Recording” sheet dated April 15, 1948 lists as items to be recorded at four sessions two Scarlatti Sonatas (he had already recorded two the previous year), the Chopin Barcarolle, Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso (thus dismissing the tale that the work was recorded on a whim), Debussy’s Soiree dans Grenade, and de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance. Two of the dates are crossed out, and Lipatti is only known to have recorded the Chopin and Ravel titles. (The Barcarolle was rejected and issued posthumously.) A memo dated April 21, 1948 – the day the Barcarolle was recorded – finds Legge writing that “Lipatti has made a special request to record the Schumann Etudes Symphoniques,” a work in his active repertoire at the time. Although the request was promptly approved, it appears that the recording was not made.

He did record six 78 sides accompanying the cellist Antonio Janigro (as a “test for Mr. W. Legge,” according to the recording sheets) at the Zurich Wolfbach Studio on May 24, 1947, when the artists were performing a series of chamber music recitals. Among them are the first movement of the Beethoven Third Cello Sonata and a movement of a Bach Cello Sonata. (A complete set of pressings is known to exist in private hands, yet only two sides from another source could be obtained for release a few years back.) On a similar note, Lipatti had also been asked to record the Chopin Cello Sonata with Gaspar Cassado, but was said to be “unavailable.”

Other recordings which had been planned include the Busoni Indian Fantasia and the Mozart C Major Concerto K.467. The Bartok Third Concerto (with Karajan) and the Chopin Waltzes were scheduled for November 1949; a suggestion to record in Switzerland was overturned, and Lipatti never made it to London. An emphatic plea to send equipment to record Lipatti in the Chopin E Minor Concerto came from the Jecklin Pianohaus, Zurich on February 21, 1950; this too never transpired. It would not be until July 1950 that equipment would be sent to Geneva and that Lipatti would make his valedictory recordings of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin.

The final sessions

It should be noted that he was presented with two pianos for these sessions – one Hamburg Steinway concert-grand from the Jecklins, and another short grand donated by admirers. According to Walter Legge, Lipatti opted for the latter, his “virgin, whom no other hands have caressed,” despite the fact that Legge had a “rooted objection to the lack of warm bass that seems inevitable in recordings made with short grands.” However, both Bela Siki and Jacques Chapuis, who visited the studio during the sessions, stated that it was indeed a grand piano, but that the small size of the studio creates the impression that a short grand was being used. As a result, the widely celebrated recordings, while of exceptional beauty and musicality, do not reveal Lipatti’s spacious tone and subtlety of articulation to the degree as would have a recording in a more spacious studio; this is particularly noticeable in the Chopin (a comparison with the 1947 recording of the A-flat Waltz makes this clear). How ironic that when Lipatti as in such vibrant health, he made recordings of his “less tiring programme” on what sounds like a sub-concert grand piano!

Lipatti’s pianism
Lipatti’s pianism is remarkable in how it expresses profound truth with utter simplicity, and is characterized by the crystalline clarity with which both structure and character are revealed. His interpretations go beyond the limited framework of the piano with his flawless command of pianistic technique – not simply digital accuracy but purity of tone regardless of the dynamics (his range was enormous), crisp precision of articulation, accenting without distortion of the melodic line, steadiness of rhythmic pulse, clarity of texture in voicing, and subtlety and timing of pedaling. That melodic lines are so deftly sculpted and presented in such stark relief is due to his ability to vary the attack used by different fingers, even within the same hand. The voicing of all lines is thus thoroughly consistent, and inner voices do not distract from the main subject; each line becomes an individual voice with its own unique timbre, together forming a choir of interdependent entities, each weaving its pattern in a tapestry of exquisite complexity.

His playing is immaculate – the balance, timing, and significance of every phrase, nuance, and harmonic progression has been considered and mastered, yet his performances exhibit warmth and passion and are free of the air of academic over-analysis. He presents each work under his fingers with such disarming simplicity that the music seems to be speaking freely through him, as though he were a receiver through which the composer’s intended message (of which the text is but a shadow) were being transmitted from the source of its inspiration – hence one French critic’s comment that he “heard Chopin himself interpreting his Sonata in B minor”. This does not mean that he was a literalist, however, and examples abound of changes he made to the text. He spoke, however, of the greater importance of the “Ur-spirit” as opposed to the Urtext, often telling his students that “if you are well brought-up, you can put your feet on the table and not offend anyone.”

A variety of approaches
Dinu Lipatti grasped and clarified the idiom of every composer whose works he played, and consequently his entire discography is worthy of examination. His ability to present the structure of a work with both the architectural overview of a blueprint and the spirit of a living being renders his Bach performances particularly worthy of attention, not least an unorthodox interpretation of the D Minor Concerto with selected Busoni variants: the perfectly steady decrescendo near the end of the first movement, with chromatic progressions in the outer voices superbly highlighted, puts an end to any audience noise in the Concertgebouw and will keep present-day listeners on the edge of their seats.

Recordings have been issued of Lipatti in two works of Mozart, the C Major Concerto K.467 and the A Minor Sonata K.310, and his performances of both exhibit the youthful innocence with tragic undertones that characterized the lives of both the composer and the interpreter. In his Chopin recordings, rhythmic pulse is subtly maintained, tempo shifts are beautifully choreographed (the transition into the coda of the D-flat Nocturne, the middle section of the Barcarolle, and the first movement of the Third Sonata are prime examples), and inner voices which cooperate rather than compete with the principal subject emerge clearly with pure singing tone. The middle section of the E Minor Etude is a miracle of balance and texture, the long melodic line never-ending, enveloped in cascading waves of harmonies. Lipatti’s virtuosity is put to dramatic yet musical use in his recording of the Grieg Concerto (the first movement cadenza is particularly spellbinding) and in all of his Liszt performances. The cadenza in the Allegro animato of the Liszt First Concerto, with its rumbling bass and carefully arched phrasing, has never sounded so sinister, and the Sonetto del Petrarca No.104 is of remarkable sensuality (the tonal control in the coda is breathtaking).

Contemporary champion
Lipatti’s performances of 20th Century music fully reveal the qualities that make all of his recordings so astounding. The transparency of his voicing and his rich, tonal palette demonstrate that dissonance need not be aggressive, but that it is simply a delayed resolution based on different laws than those used by earlier composers. Rather than hammering out a discordant note, Lipatti burnishes it and draws attention to its placement and how it is subsequently resolved. The chorale of the Adagio religioso of the Bartok Third Concerto is a stunning example, as chords reveal themselves to be clusters of tone vibrations (“music in its purest form”), each with its own particular flavour, colour, and message. The Third Sonata of Enescu, a work of extraordinary complexity, receives a stunning interpretation in which Lipatti is able to rapidly shift soundscapes to create a collage of tonal and atmospheric effects.

There is no greater recording of Dinu Lipatti than that of Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso (it is, in fact, the only one with which he was fully satisfied), which reveals his varied tonal palette, staggering virtuosity, and miraculous interpretative genius. The rapid-fire repeated notes, bright punchiness of the chords, impossibly hair-raising graduated glissandos with spellbinding dynamic control, and orchestral sonorities make this one of the most phenomenal of all piano recordings, one which must be heard to be believed.

 

An inspiration
The bold and profoundly inspiring nature of Dinu Lipatti’s pianism continues to move lovers of fine piano playing the world over. There is little doubt that had he lived, he would have been universally acclaimed as one the greatest musical minds on the planet. While it is natural to wish for more performances to enjoy (and the possibility still exists – one cache of private recordings, known to have existed, went missing some years ago), we are indeed fortunate to have access to so many superb recordings which allow us to comprehend that such feats of musicality and divine inspiration are indeed possible. Kempff wrote that “all that is left for us to do is to remember the beauty of what he gave us, and to mourn.” Let us focus less on the drama of Dinu Lipatti’s life and death, and instead try to embody the qualities that his musicality represents, while continuing to enjoy the unique recordings of a prince of pianists who was a master musician, “an instrument of God.”

This revision © Mark Ainley, 2002

Header image of Lipatti at his final recital in Besançon courtesy of the Estate of Michel Meusy

Dinu Lipatti plays the Bach-Hess chorale Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring in 1947

This is a revised form of an article that was published in the Summer 1999 edition of International Piano Quarterly. It has been updated with information that has since come to light.

Dinu Lipatti is one of the most mystical of pianists, yet over a half century after his premature death, most pianophiles know little more than the sketchy biographical information published with the frequent reissues of his critically lauded recordings. He received no more than a parenthetical mention in the classic tome The Great Pianists, Harold C. Schonberg’s only comment being that “his death in 1950 at the age of 33 took away a pianist who would have been one of the major figures of the century.” Such observations overlook the fact that before his death, Lipatti was already considered one of the greatest pianists and musicians to have graced the concert stage.

Exploding the Myth
Stories about the dramatic nature of his suffering at the hands of leukemia have often overshadowed his uniquely profound musicianship. Dinu Lipatti was in fact a far more modern, revolutionary, and dynamic pianist than his ill health or the limited scope of his few recordings would indicate. He is still generally thought of as a Bach-Mozart-Chopin pianist, yet his repertoire ranged from Bach to Bartok, Scarlatti to Stravinski, and he publicly performed some 23 works for piano and orchestra. A champion of modern music (he was a talented and successful composer himself), as a student he performed concerts of Rumanian music in 1930s Paris with the likes of Szigeti and Enescu, and he gave the Swiss premiere of the Bartok Third Concerto with Ansermet (the orchestral scores arrived the day of the concert, and by all accounts it was a stellar performance). If his sickness prevented him from concertizing overseas (Malcuzynski was his last-minute replacement on a three-month Australian tour in 1949), Lipatti did perform all over Europe, from London to Bratislava and Helsinki to Rome, under conductors as varied as Abendroth, Ackermann, Ansermet, van Beinum, Bigot, Boehm, Hindemith, Karajan, Mengelberg, Munch, Sacher, and Scherchen.

Unique programmes
Despite his overall physical weakness, Lipatti’s endurance on stage could be phenomenal, and his unorthodox programming indicates that he was not quite the frail, overly cautious purist many believe him to have been. What pianist today plays two concertos per concert? In his late teens in Bucharest Lipatti played the Mozart D Minor Concerto with Stravinski’s Capriccio (the critic felt that his playing was more suited to the Stravinski than to the Mozart!), and in his later years he coupled the Liszt E Flat Concerto with either the Mozart D Minor, Martin Ballade, or Chopin Andante Spianato and Polonaise, and would pair the Bach-Busoni D Minor or Haydn D Major Concertos with the Ravel G Major Concerto – what incredible juxtapositions of style! He created a stir when, at the 1947 Lucerne Festival under Hindemith’s baton, he performed the Mozart D Minor Concerto with Beethoven’s cadenza; while the concert was viewed as the highlight of the festival, Lipatti was accused of having written the “evil and anachronistic cadenza.”

His solo programmes were equally bold and varied. He performed in one recital four Preludes and Fugues of Bach, Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques, and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. One 1947 Chopin recital was a heroic survey of the composer’s works: 6 Preludes, 3 Etudes, Sonata Op.58, Ballade op.52, Mazurka Op.50 No.3, Scherzo Op.20, Nocturne Op.27 No.2, Waltz Op.34 No.1, and Polonaise Op.22. At other times, his recitals focused on one large-scale work, such as the Waldstein, Chopin B Minor Sonata, or the Etudes Symphoniques, the rest of the programme being a historical progression of smaller-scale compositions from Bach through Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, and through to modern composers like Debussy, Ravel, de Falla, and Enescu.

Fact vs. Fiction
If Lipatti’s career and repertoire were more expansive than has previously been believed, it should also be noted that some of the most famous anecdotes regarding his recordings and repertoire are completely false.

Myth No.1: Lipatti would not record the Tchaikovsky Concerto unless he had three years to prepare it, and he would require four years for the Emperor Concerto.

Fact: An internal memo from Lipatti’s recording producer, the legendary Walter Legge, dated February 23, 1948 says that “Lipatti has his heart set on doing a Beethoven Concerto in 1949” and proposes a recording of the Emperor (which Lipatti had performed twice in Bucharest in the 1940-41 season); another dated June 7, 1948, addressing a proposed Tchaikovsky Concerto recording for Columbia, finds Legge presenting “the ideal solution for this problem. Lipatti has agreed to record this work in 1949 in London with Karajan.” (This was eventually shot down in favour of a recording with Malcuzynski.)

Myth No.2: Lipatti agreed to play the Beethoven Waldstein Sonata within the last two years of his life at Artur Schnabel’s suggestion when Legge introduced the two pianists.

Fact: Lipatti had performed the Waldstein regularly since 1935, making the first of many broadcasts of the work the following year, and he knew Schnabel well before he met Legge. (It was Edwin Fischer who, in 1943, taught Lipatti “the daring way in which Beethoven indicated the use of the forte pedal” in the last movement.)

Accolades from the musical elite
The extraordinary clarity of his playing and the probing musicality of his interpretations earned Lipatti the recognition and admiration of the musical luminaries of his time. Pianists such as Backhaus, Cortot, Fischer, Haskil, Kempff, and Schnabel were friends and supporters, as were musicians from other fields in music – Ansermet, Boulanger, Cuenod, Dukas, Enescu, Honegger, Markevich, Menuhin, Munch, Poulenc, Toscanini… Cortot, noting Lipatti’s “exceptional gifts,” called him “a real revelation on the horizon of pianists,” writing on his death, “There was nothing to teach you. One could, in fact, only learn from you.” When Frank Martin first heard Lipatti play, he “felt that something unusual was happening, that I had never heard the piano played like this.” Poulenc labeled him an “artist of Divine spirituality,” and Honegger said that he was “above all a musician and, secondly, a pianist.” Karajan described his playing as “no longer the sound of the piano, but music in its purest form.”

No less than Toscanini became a great admirer upon hearing Lipatti in the Chopin E Minor Concerto at La Scala in 1946, first in rehearsal – Lipatti had asked the maestro if he would offer some “severe criticism, which he readily agreed to do,” (oddly enough) – and then in concert, proclaiming “At last we have a Chopin sans caprices and with the rubato to my liking.” They developed quite a friendship, with Dinu and Madeleine being extended a rare invitation to attend his rehearsals (“these were rare moments of joy and encouragement for me,” wrote Dinu), and they spent more time together later in Lucerne.

Colleagues and admirers
The high esteem in which Lipatti was held by many great pianists is a true testimony to his artistry. He had met Edwin Fischer when he was a student in Paris, and was offered assistance any time he should visit Berlin; years later in Switzerland, they would meet and play for each other whenever they could. Clara Haskil, with whom he became lifelong friends, wrote “you are a very great artist and soon all your famous colleagues will be put in the shade by you.” Artur Schnabel declared that Lipatti’s playing was “an entirely new way of playing the piano” and attended several of his concerts. He was devastated by his death, writing of “a very real and personal loss. I admired and liked that boy immensely… He was one of the most attractive personalities I have known in my life.”

He was obviously an extremely congenial individual and a musician of tremendous capabilities, and his playing has continued to captivate listeners through the widespread release of his commercial and live recordings. Biographical information provides a fascinating look at his formative influences and his achievements, and hitherto-unpublished information regarding his recording career and analysis of his pianistic approach cast new light on this most unique musician and his artistry.

Early studies and beyond
There was never any doubt that Dinu Lipatti would devote his life to music. His proud, musical parents picked up on his natural talent right away, and with Georges Enescu as his godfather, his environment catered to his calling. Born March 19, 1917 in Bucharest, Rumania, young Dinu (Constantin was his birth name) started studying piano with his mother at the age of four and was soon composing evocative descriptions of family members. At eight he was under the supervision of local legend Mihail Jora, and he was eleven when he entered the class of Florica Musicescu at the Bucharest Academy.

While much has been made of Lipatti’s later studies with Cortot, that the French master felt that he had nothing to teach him was undoubtedly due to the thoroughness with which Musicescu instilled in Lipatti a monumentally comprehensive technique, an unrelenting critical ear, and deep understanding of his responsibility as a performing artist. The teacher of other fine pianists such as Radu Lupu and the nearly forgotten Mindru Katz, Musicescu was apparently somewhat of a tyrant, and if Lipatti occasionally went home in tears, his respect for and faith in his teacher were undying. He remained in contact with her for his entire life.

An unusual win
By the time he entered the 1933 Vienna International Music Competition at the age of 16, he had performed the Grieg, Chopin E Minor, and Liszt E-Flat Major Concertos to great acclaim. Rumanian critics were already pinpointing the very qualities for which Lipatti’s playing continues to move listeners today, noting that he was “endowed not only with a splendid technique, but also with spiritual qualities, a fine grasp of the works performed, and a great desire to achieve the correct interpretation.” His participation in the competition would, rather backhandedly, prove to be a launching pad for his career.

The distinguished jury was a who’s-who of the piano world, including Arrau, Backhaus, Cortot, de Greef, Dohnanyi, Erdmann, Friedman, Gieseking, Hess, Landowska, Michalowski, Ney, Phillipp, Rachmaninoff, Rosenthal, and von Sauer. In the final round, it was a toss-up between Lipatti and Poland’s Boleslav Kon; because the latter would soon be beyond the age limit for competitions (and as Lipatti was so young), he was awarded first prize, and Lipatti tied for second with the USSR’s Mykyscha Taras. (Other finalists included Gina Bachauer and Gyorgyi Sandor.) Cortot was indignant about the use of non-musical criteria in the decision-making process, and is reported to have resigned from the jury in protest (this is, in fact, not clear, but his vocal objection certainly is). When given the choice between attending the awards ceremony or a recital given by Cortot the same evening, Lipatti opted for the recital, nevertheless reporting with characteristic modesty that the first prize “went to a Pole who possessed great experience, assurance, and calm.”

Paris in the ‘30s
It was not until the fall of 1934, after another year of studying and performing in Bucharest, that Lipatti moved to Paris – possibly not at Cortot’s invitation but at the suggestion of his mother, who went with him. When Lipatti did go to play for Cortot at the Ecole Normale de Musique, he was immediately recognized and invited to study piano with Cortot and his assistant Yvonne Lefebure, and composition with Paul Dukas. He would later study conducting with Charles Munch, and after Dukas’ death his composition teacher was Nadia Boulanger, who became his “spiritual mother.” (Like Musicescu, she too was capable of acts of tyranny, and years later, when she continued to reduce students to tears by having them play Bach fugues with the parts reversed, it was reported that only Lipatti had done so successfully.)

Lipatti enjoyed a prosperous period of study and performing, being invited to the musical salons and concertizing successfully in Paris and nearby European cities. Critics did not know “what to praise most, his technical mastery or his profound musical understanding.” Lipatti’s elegantly-phrased reviews of concerts by Horowitz, von Sauer, Kreisler, and others, published in Rumania’s Libertatea, reveal his acute sensibility and awareness regarding the changing direction of musical performance (“today we witness a tendency towards absolute technical perfection devoid of any sensitivity or elan”) and the influence of “public opinion, which remains eternally superficial, dependent on trends made fashionable by snobbery and publicity.”

The winds of war

At the outbreak of the war, Lipatti returned to Rumania, and continued to enjoy a career as a soloist (he performed the Liszt First Concerto with Mengelberg) in addition to beginning a two-piano partnership with his future wife, Madeleine Cantacuzene. Concerts were given in destinations such as Bratislava, Sofia, Vienna, Berlin (where “severe characters dressed in black… barely raised their eyebrows when they smiled – I liked them”), and Rome. While he wrote of a tour in March 1943 that was to find him performing throughout Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany with the likes of Abendroth and Boehm, he apparently did not go – concert programs exist for performances he made at that time in Rumania. (Friedrich Wuehrer performed on at least one of the scheduled occasions.)

On September 4, 1943, Lipatti left Rumania with Madeleine, provisionally on a ten-day tour, and never returned. After a blown engine led to an emergency landing in Hungary, he traveled to Vienna, Stockholm, and Helsinki before giving a tour of Switzerland, enjoying such unprecedented success that he remained for some time in Switzerland. The following year, Lipatti was offered an honorary professorship at the Geneva Conservatory; although some “colleagues” had lodged a protest based on political ideologies, Lipatti was supported by Ansermet, Martin, and others, and in April 1944 he began his role as professor of the Classe de Virtuosite, a position he held for five years.

A mysterious illness
It was shortly after his arrival in Switzerland that the first signs of a mysterious illness appeared. It started out as a persistent fever, and after some time he was treated with X-ray therapy. He remained in precarious health for the rest of his life (he had been somewhat weak since childhood and as such his general education had taken place at home), and baffled doctors, in their desperate attempts to find a solution, administered esoteric treatments that brought about serious side effects. Around the time of his Columbia recordings he underwent mustard-gas injections, which caused such immense swelling in his left arm that his suits needed altering to hide the disfiguration; Lipatti joked that he could now produce “such formidable sonorities in the bass that even Miss Musicescu would be satisfied!” He had only one working lung (“my lung of existence”), and by 1947 had been diagnosed with lymphogranulomatosis, a form of leukemia known as Hodgkin’s Disease.

Despite frequent cancellations caused by ill health, Lipatti concertized throughout Europe in halls packed with audiences who had heard talk of a pianist who brought unimaginable depth to his interpretations. The musical world outside of Europe began to learn of Lipatti when the release of his Columbia recordings started in 1947. The Schumann Concerto was particularly well-received (even if Lipatti wasn’t too happy with the “super-classical” Karajan’s tempi), but about a month after it was recorded in April 1948, Lipatti fell gravely ill and for a year and a half gave only a handful of concerts. He was having weekly blood transfusions, and in 1949 was forced to abandon his teaching post. He prepared a “less tiring programme” (Bach Partita No.1, Mozart Sonata No.8, 2 Schubert Impromptus, and the Chopin Waltzes) and dropped grander works from his repertoire in order to conserve his strength. Admirers held onto their tickets in the hope that he would appear despite official cancellations. By the end of 1949 Lipatti was performing more, albeit sporadically, continuing to mesmerize audiences with what one contemporary referred to as “a different kind of expression.”

A ray of hope

In the Autumn of 1949, Lipatti’s friend and colleague Paul Sacher and his wife heard of the success of cortisone treatment in America and, when the Swiss doctors gave their approval several months later, obtained the very best pure leaf extract (at the then-exorbitant cost of eighteen pounds a day) with the help of other Lipatti admirers. The success was startling: “Just think of it, I’m still marvelously well,” he wrote his benefactors. “It’s an unheard-of feeling.” Recording equipment was sent to Geneva to capture Lipatti’s playing as he enjoyed an unprecedented remission and return to vitality.

But after this brief flash of optimism, his condition deteriorated (doctors had dared give the injections for no more than a month) and he gave only two more concerts, performing the Mozart Concerto K.467 in Lucerne with Karajan and a final solo recital in the small French town of Besancon, both of which were recorded and posthumously issued. The most famous story of Lipatti’s career, sadly, is the fact that he was too weak to perform the last of the fourteen Chopin Waltzes he had programmed; after a brief absence from the stage he played “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” instead, as a final offering.

Dinu Lipatti died on December 2, 1950 – not of the leukemia which had plagued him for years, nor from the various medical treatments which had ravaged his body, but because an abscess on his one working lung, having gone unnoticed by his doctor that very day, burst. He was 33 years old.

The recordings
Lipatti’s international renown and reputation today come, for the most part, from his incredible EMI recordings, and it is a virtually unknown fact that this association almost never came to be. In January 1946 one Sidney Beer was in Switzerland signing artists to Decca, and Dinu Lipatti was at the top of his list (which also included Furtwaengler, Richard Strauss, and Backhaus). Decca hoped to organize a tour for Lipatti, and over a two-month period “make a large number of recordings. It [was] proposed to record piano concertos of Chopin and other composers.” When EMI learned of this, they quickly intervened (they had not followed through on a previous offer to Lipatti) and won the artist to their Columbia sub label. After his first failed recording session in Zurich (a new material the company was experimenting with resulted in noisy surfaces), Lipatti would go to London three times to record before his final sessions in Geneva.

The few recordings Lipatti did make for Columbia (totaling about 3 1/2 hours) are of remarkable musicianship and interpretative depth, and that we do not have more is due not only to cancellations brought about by Lipatti’s sickness, but also to an overall lack of foresight regarding the seriousness of his condition and the great importance of capturing a comprehensive cross-section of his repertoire on disc. It has already been shown how Lipatti was prepared to record the Emperor Concerto and the Tchaikovsky Concerto, despite stories indicating otherwise. Other recordings which had been proposed (and in one case, made) are mouth-watering to be sure.

Lost opportunities

An “Instructions for Recording” sheet dated April 15, 1948 lists as items to be recorded at four sessions two Scarlatti Sonatas (he had already recorded two the previous year), the Chopin Barcarolle, Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso (thus dismissing the tale that the work was recorded on a whim), Debussy’s Soiree dans Grenade, and de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance. Two of the dates are crossed out, and Lipatti is only known to have recorded the Chopin and Ravel titles. (The Barcarolle was rejected and issued posthumously.) A memo dated April 21, 1948 – the day the Barcarolle was recorded – finds Legge writing that “Lipatti has made a special request to record the Schumann Etudes Symphoniques,” a work in his active repertoire at the time. Although the request was promptly approved, it appears that the recording was not made.

He did record six 78 sides accompanying the cellist Antonio Janigro (as a “test for Mr. W. Legge,” according to the recording sheets) at the Zurich Wolfbach Studio on May 24, 1947, when the artists were performing a series of chamber music recitals. Among them are the first movement of the Beethoven Third Cello Sonata and a movement of a Bach Cello Sonata. (A complete set of pressings is known to exist in private hands, yet only two sides from another source could be obtained for release a few years back.) On a similar note, Lipatti had also been asked to record the Chopin Cello Sonata with Gaspar Cassado, but was said to be “unavailable.”

Other recordings which had been planned include the Busoni Indian Fantasia and the Mozart C Major Concerto K.467. The Bartok Third Concerto (with Karajan) and the Chopin Waltzes were scheduled for November 1949; a suggestion to record in Switzerland was overturned, and Lipatti never made it to London. An emphatic plea to send equipment to record Lipatti in the Chopin E Minor Concerto came from the Jecklin Pianohaus, Zurich on February 21, 1950; this too never transpired. It would not be until July 1950 that equipment would be sent to Geneva and that Lipatti would make his valedictory recordings of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin.

The final sessions

It should be noted that he was presented with two pianos for these sessions – one Hamburg Steinway concert-grand from the Jecklins, and another short grand donated by admirers. According to Walter Legge, Lipatti opted for the latter, his “virgin, whom no other hands have caressed,” despite the fact that Legge had a “rooted objection to the lack of warm bass that seems inevitable in recordings made with short grands.” However, both Bela Siki and Jacques Chapuis, who visited the studio during the sessions, stated that it was indeed a grand piano, but that the small size of the studio creates the impression that a short grand was being used. As a result, the widely celebrated recordings, while of exceptional beauty and musicality, do not reveal Lipatti’s spacious tone and subtlety of articulation to the degree as would have a recording in a more spacious studio; this is particularly noticeable in the Chopin (a comparison with the 1947 recording of the A-flat Waltz makes this clear). How ironic that when Lipatti as in such vibrant health, he made recordings of his “less tiring programme” on what sounds like a sub-concert grand piano!

Lipatti’s pianism
Lipatti’s pianism is remarkable in how it expresses profound truth with utter simplicity, and is characterized by the crystalline clarity with which both structure and character are revealed. His interpretations go beyond the limited framework of the piano with his flawless command of pianistic technique – not simply digital accuracy but purity of tone regardless of the dynamics (his range was enormous), crisp precision of articulation, accenting without distortion of the melodic line, steadiness of rhythmic pulse, clarity of texture in voicing, and subtlety and timing of pedaling. That melodic lines are so deftly sculpted and presented in such stark relief is due to his ability to vary the attack used by different fingers, even within the same hand. The voicing of all lines is thus thoroughly consistent, and inner voices do not distract from the main subject; each line becomes an individual voice with its own unique timbre, together forming a choir of interdependent entities, each weaving its pattern in a tapestry of exquisite complexity.

His playing is immaculate – the balance, timing, and significance of every phrase, nuance, and harmonic progression has been considered and mastered, yet his performances exhibit warmth and passion and are free of the air of academic over-analysis. He presents each work under his fingers with such disarming simplicity that the music seems to be speaking freely through him, as though he were a receiver through which the composer’s intended message (of which the text is but a shadow) were being transmitted from the source of its inspiration – hence one French critic’s comment that he “heard Chopin himself interpreting his Sonata in B minor”. This does not mean that he was a literalist, however, and examples abound of changes he made to the text. He spoke, however, of the greater importance of the “Ur-spirit” as opposed to the Urtext, often telling his students that “if you are well brought-up, you can put your feet on the table and not offend anyone.”

A variety of approaches
Dinu Lipatti grasped and clarified the idiom of every composer whose works he played, and consequently his entire discography is worthy of examination. His ability to present the structure of a work with both the architectural overview of a blueprint and the spirit of a living being renders his Bach performances particularly worthy of attention, not least an unorthodox interpretation of the D Minor Concerto with selected Busoni variants: the perfectly steady decrescendo near the end of the first movement, with chromatic progressions in the outer voices superbly highlighted, puts an end to any audience noise in the Concertgebouw and will keep present-day listeners on the edge of their seats.

Recordings have been issued of Lipatti in two works of Mozart, the C Major Concerto K.467 and the A Minor Sonata K.310, and his performances of both exhibit the youthful innocence with tragic undertones that characterized the lives of both the composer and the interpreter. In his Chopin recordings, rhythmic pulse is subtly maintained, tempo shifts are beautifully choreographed (the transition into the coda of the D-flat Nocturne, the middle section of the Barcarolle, and the first movement of the Third Sonata are prime examples), and inner voices which cooperate rather than compete with the principal subject emerge clearly with pure singing tone. The middle section of the E Minor Etude is a miracle of balance and texture, the long melodic line never-ending, enveloped in cascading waves of harmonies. Lipatti’s virtuosity is put to dramatic yet musical use in his recording of the Grieg Concerto (the first movement cadenza is particularly spellbinding) and in all of his Liszt performances. The cadenza in the Allegro animato of the Liszt First Concerto, with its rumbling bass and carefully arched phrasing, has never sounded so sinister, and the Sonetto del Petrarca No.104 is of remarkable sensuality (the tonal control in the coda is breathtaking).

Contemporary champion
Lipatti’s performances of 20th Century music fully reveal the qualities that make all of his recordings so astounding. The transparency of his voicing and his rich, tonal palette demonstrate that dissonance need not be aggressive, but that it is simply a delayed resolution based on different laws than those used by earlier composers. Rather than hammering out a discordant note, Lipatti burnishes it and draws attention to its placement and how it is subsequently resolved. The chorale of the Adagio religioso of the Bartok Third Concerto is a stunning example, as chords reveal themselves to be clusters of tone vibrations (“music in its purest form”), each with its own particular flavour, colour, and message. The Third Sonata of Enescu, a work of extraordinary complexity, receives a stunning interpretation in which Lipatti is able to rapidly shift soundscapes to create a collage of tonal and atmospheric effects.

There is no greater recording of Dinu Lipatti than that of Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso (it is, in fact, the only one with which he was fully satisfied), which reveals his varied tonal palette, staggering virtuosity, and miraculous interpretative genius. The rapid-fire repeated notes, bright punchiness of the chords, impossibly hair-raising graduated glissandos with spellbinding dynamic control, and orchestral sonorities make this one of the most phenomenal of all piano recordings, one which must be heard to be believed.

 

An inspiration
The bold and profoundly inspiring nature of Dinu Lipatti’s pianism continues to move lovers of fine piano playing the world over. There is little doubt that had he lived, he would have been universally acclaimed as one the greatest musical minds on the planet. While it is natural to wish for more performances to enjoy (and the possibility still exists – one cache of private recordings, known to have existed, went missing some years ago), we are indeed fortunate to have access to so many superb recordings which allow us to comprehend that such feats of musicality and divine inspiration are indeed possible. Kempff wrote that “all that is left for us to do is to remember the beauty of what he gave us, and to mourn.” Let us focus less on the drama of Dinu Lipatti’s life and death, and instead try to embody the qualities that his musicality represents, while continuing to enjoy the unique recordings of a prince of pianists who was a master musician, “an instrument of God.”

This revision © Mark Ainley, 2002

Header image of Lipatti at his final recital in Besançon courtesy of the Estate of Michel Meusy

Dinu Lipatti plays the Bach-Hess chorale Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring in 1947