Dinu Lipatti
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| Dinu Lipatti | ||
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| Background information | ||
| Born | March 19, 1917 Bucharest, Romania  |
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| Died | December 2, 1950 Geneva, Switzerland  |
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| Genre(s) | Classical Music | |
| Occupation(s) | Pianist, Composer | |
| Label(s) | EMI | |
Dinu Lipatti (March 19, 1917, Bucharest – December 2, 1950, Geneva) was a Romanian classical pianist and composer whose career was tragically cut short by his death from Hodgkin's disease at age 33. Despite his short career and a relatively small recorded legacy, Lipatti is considered as one of the finest pianists of the 20th century.
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[edit] Biography
Lipatti was born in Bucharest into a musical family: his father was a violinist, his mother a pianist, and his godfather was the violinist and composer George Enescu. He studied at the Gheorghe Lazăr High School, and finished second at the 1934 Vienna International Piano Competition, which led to Alfred Cortot, who thought he should have won, resigning from the jury in protest. Lipatti subsequently studied in Paris under Cortot, Nadia Boulanger (with whom he recorded some of Johannes Brahms Waltzes Op. 39), Paul Dukas (composition) and Charles Münch (conducting).
Lipatti's career was interrupted by World War II. Although he continued to give concerts throughout Europe, including Nazi-occupied territories, he eventually fled his native Romania in 1943 and settled with his wife in Geneva, Switzerland, where he accepted the position as piano professor at the conservatory. It was at this time that the first signs of his illness emerged. At first, doctors were baffled, but in 1947 he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease. [1]As a result, his concertizing receded considerably after the war.
Lipatti gave his final recital, which was recorded, on 16 September 1950 in Besançon. Despite severe illness, he gave unmatched performances of Bach’s B flat major Partita, Mozart’s A minor Sonata, Schubert's G flat major and E flat major Impromptus, and thirteen of Chopin's 14 Waltzes. He excluded No. 2, which he was too exhausted to play; he offered instead Myra Hess’s transcription of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. He died less than 3 months later. Lipatti is buried at the cemetery of Chêne-Bourg next to his wife Madeleine, a noted piano teacher.
[edit] Repertoire
Lipatti's playing was hailed as having reached the highest degrees in integrity and pianistic technique — which he employed in the quest for musical perfection.
Lipatti is particularly noted for his interpretations of Frédéric Chopin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach, but he also made recordings of Maurice Ravel's Alborada del Gracioso, Franz Liszt, George Enescu, the Schumann Piano Concerto, and Grieg Piano Concerto. His recording of Chopin's Waltzes has remained in print since its release and has long been a favorite of many classical music-lovers.
Lipatti never recorded any music of Beethoven, and only included him in his recitals towards the end of his career. This was not because he did not like Beethoven - on the contrary, he idolised him, and felt that he could never really do his music justice.
A recording of Chopin's First Piano Concerto, originally released under Lipatti's name, and said to have been a recording of a live performance in Switzerland in May 1948, proved not to be his contribution at all — in 1981, it emerged that the soloist on this recording was in fact a Polish pianist (and a fellow Cortot pupil), the comparatively little known Halina Czerny-Stefańska playing with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Vaclav Smetacek. [2]
[edit] Legacy
In addition to his pianistic accomplishments, Lipatti was a composer, who wrote in a neoclassical style with French and Romanian influences. He was posthumously made a member of the Romanian Academy (in 1997).
[edit] Trivia
- There is a song called "Dinu Lipatti's Bones" on the album The Sunset Tree by The Mountain Goats.
- Lipatti is referenced in The Silent Cry, a landmark novel by the Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe.
[edit] Notable recordings
- 1939 - Johannes Brahms, Waltzes Op. 39 , with Nadia Boulanger.
- 1947 - Robert Schumann, Piano Concerto in a, with Herbert von Karajan and the Philharmonia
- 1948 - Edvard Grieg, Piano Concerto in a, with Alceo Galliera and the Philharmonia
- 1948 - Frédéric Chopin, Waltzes
- 1950 - Robert Schumann, Piano Concerto in a, with Ernest Ansermet and the Swiss-Roman Orchestra
- 1950 - Final Recital at Besançon (music of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Chopin)
