These notes were written shortly before the article for IPQ (early 1999 was a busy time!). Included here is the original text, but with endnotes relating to information that warrants further attention.
Dinu Lipatti’s 1947 UK Columbia recordings capture his pianism at its dynamic peak. After the failed attempt at making records the preceding year in Zurich (technical deficiencies resulted in their being scrapped), enthusiasm was no doubt high as Lipatti went to London twice, in February/March and again in September, for a series of concerts, broadcasts, and recording sessions. Conditions at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London (including the extraordinarily responsive Steinway 299) were excellent and the resulting recordings do not hint at the ill health that forced Lipatti to cancel a number of his London engagements. Presented here in new transfers, these landmarks of pianism – the first post-war recordings of Dinu Lipatti – sound fuller than previously, revealing nuances and interpretative details as if for the first time. (In addition to these London recordings, Lipatti also recorded six 78-rpm sides accompanying the cellist Antonio Janigro at the Wolfbach Studio in Zurich, among them the first movement of Beethoven’s Third Cello Sonata. Only two sides of shorter works from this session were available for release a few years ago.) [i]
Lipatti frequently performed early keyboard works (including compositions of Byrd) and Scarlatti Sonatas were a regular fixture in his recitals. He performs them simply, yet with an inner warmth and fullness of tone (without going beyond the limits of taste) that are of exquisite beauty and elegance, showing that simplicity and clarity reveal more than academic fussiness.
Myra Hess’s arrangement of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring is the single work most often associated with Dinu Lipatti. It was the opening item of his first Paris recital (in memory of Paul Dukas), and his final offering at his last recital, in Besancon. Although Lipatti was not entirely satisfied with this recording, he consented to its release in France and Switzerland to satisfy the demands of his many followers. [ii] It has not been reissued since: any prior LP or CD issue listing the 1947 recording has in fact presented the 1950 version. The earlier recording has a more full-bodied sound and luxuriant approach than the renowned 1950 recording made on a sub-concert grand piano donated by admirers. [iii]
It is as a Chopin performer that Lipatti is most famous, yet the final recording of the Waltzes on the aforementioned sub-concert grand, magnificent as it is, does not fully demonstrate the tremendous vitality, panache and bravura of which Lipatti was capable. In his Chopin recordings, Lipatti characteristically displays sensitivity without lapsing into sentimentality. He is attentive to the different phases of development, to the shifting moods and the tenderness contrasting with dramatic tension that unfold within each piece, all the while exhibiting both youthful innocence and distinguished eloquence.
The D Flat Nocturne is a model of purity and balance, of fullness of tone combined with delicacy and elegance. Melodic lines and perfectly voiced, and the tempo shifts are beautifully coordinated (notice the dramatic ritardando before the a tempo coda). The A Flat Waltz Op.34 #1, the one omitted from Lipatti’s last recital, was recorded as a filler for the 78rpm set of the Grieg Concerto. Like the Bach-Hess chorale from the same session, it receives a more youthful, vibrant reading than the later recording. Here is a prime example of Lipatti’s aristocratic ability to combine virtuosity and musicality.
Chopin’s B Minor Sonata was the only large-scale solo work recorded by Lipatti until the 1950 sessions, and is one of the milestones of recorded pianism. It won the Charles Cros Academy’s Grand Prix du Disque in 1949, and has set the standard by which all other performances are judged. Each movement stands on its own and reveals its particular message with unusual depth through Lipatti’s transcendent technique and musical intellect, together creating a grand vision of tremendous refinement. [iv]
The extent to which Lipatti was a supreme interpreter of Liszt has only recently become apparent with the discovery and release of some 30 minutes of Liszt recordings (including the First Concerto) on the Archiphon label. The Sonetto del Petrarca No. 104 is the only extant commercial recording of Lipatti playing Liszt (a 1946 La Leggierezza did not survive, though a broadcast version has been issued), and is evidence of the powerful yet refined masculinity which characterized Lipatti’s pianism before his illness strengthened its hold. He uses imaginative pedaling and a dramatic, declamatory style to highlight the stark contrast between the sensual and heroic moods of the work.
A bestseller while Lipatti was still alive, his recording of the Grieg Concerto captures his mercurial pianism at its best, with its stunning virtuosity, tender lyricism, and incredibly rich, full-bodied tone. Lipatti’s recording producer Walter Legge writes of playing the cadenza for Schnabel, who despite having “little use for Grieg or his Concerto” said that “this is not only extraordinary piano playing, it is an entirely new way of playing the piano.”[v] Indeed, in addition to meeting all of the technical and musical requirements of a supreme interpretation, Lipatti presents the music with such immediacy and clarity that the feeling of Norway permeates the performance, and one senses a connection to Grieg and the image he sought to convey when he penned the work.
In all of his performances, Dinu Lipatti embodied the spirit of the time and place of the composition in question, palpably capturing the essence of the music beyond the indications of the printed page. Lipatti’s interpretations suggest that music is found not in the notes, nor even in the space between the notes, but rather in the spirit behind them. Walter Legge’s lamentation that “God lent the world His chosen instrument who we called Dinu Lipatti for too brief a space” rings true, as Lipatti seems to have acted as a channel through which the original message of the music could be broadcast from the source of its inspiration with less interference than with most performers.[vi] It is his ability to allow the music to play through him, and not the dramatic nature of his life and suffering, that must form the basis of his reputation.
As Nadia Boulanger said,
Hear these recordings of Dinu Lipatti, hear them many times: surround them with silence, without which there is no real attention, and you will understand what message they deliver.
© Mark Ainley, 1999
[i] The recordings, from May 24, 1947, include: Beethoven: First movement of Cello Sonata Op.69; Bach: Cello Sonata BWV 1028 – Andante; Chopin: Nocturne Op. Posth; Faure: Apres un Reve; Ravel: Piece en forme de Habanera; Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumblebee. Matrix numbers are CZX 221 to 226. The recording sheets all say, “Test for Mr. W. Legge.” Only the final three titles have been released, on archiphon arc 112/3. The only known complete set of pressings exists in private hands in Milan.
[ii] This fact was stated by Walter Legge but on further investigation appears to be untrue. It was issued on Columbia LC30 in England, LF253 in France, LZ9 in Switzerland, and GQ7232 in Italy – hardly the limited release that Legge claims that Lipatti had demanded.
[iii] I was under the impression that these recordings were made on a sub-concert grand because Walter Legge wrote as much, and as the recordings themselves have a rather restricted tonal range, particularly lacking a full bass. However, Lipatti’s students Jacques Chapuis, Alain Naude, and Bela Siki were all present at various times during the 1950 sessions and stated that the piano was a full grand, but that the studio used was very small. It would therefore appear that Legge’s story about Lipatti’s choice of the subconcert grand donated by admirers is inaccurate.
[iv] I would have written a great deal more here had the cassette I heard of the new remastering of this work had been as clear as that of the others. (Bryan Crimp said that he had later reworked the remastering of the Sonata after having sent me the tape.) It was only when I heard the CD that I was completely swept away by particular details of this incredible performance, particularly Lipatti’s unusual phrasing of a work that must have been considered harmonically revolutionary at the time of its composition. The incredible clarity of his pla ying – there are sections where he employs hardly any pedal – reveal harmonic and structural details in a completely avant-garde manner. It is interesting to note that in a recent (2002) survey of dozens of recordings, published in International Piano magazine, found Lipatti’s to be the best.
[v] Walter Legge claimed to have introduced Schnabel to Lipatti’s playing by playing him this recording, and then introduced the two later in person. In fact, it is clear from some letters that Lipatti knew Schnabel some time before the recording was made. Schnabel met Madeleine as he was lining up for a concert that Lipatti was giving in a church (leading him to remark that they ought to have booked Saint Paul’s Cathedral). Lipatti wrote of meeting Schnabel in Amsterdam in October 1947, within a month of the Grieg recording having been made, and said that Schnabel had heard the performance and thought it was very good. Legge’s claim to have introduced the two pianists is therefore not based on fact.
[vi] I was able to phrase this metaphor better here than in the article for IPQ. The published version in the magazine was edited and did not successfully convey the source of its inspiration!
