These are the notes to the archiphon CD “Dinu Lipatti: Cornerstones, 1936-1950”, produced for the 50th anniversary of his death. We had intended to include with the Zurich concert recording the 3 radio interviews with Lipatti made the year of his death, but two of them and a composite of the third were published on another label just before we went to press. The program was changed to include a variety of his rarer recordings.

The album is available for download on iTunes here

It is difficult to believe that 50 years have passed since Dinu Lipatti’s death. Who could have imagined that a pianist who never left Europe and made just over three hours of recordings would, more than half a century later, be internationally recognized as one of the most important pianists of the century? Key elements of his biography read like a Hollywood movie and have likely added a degree of interest in his work. However, it is clearly the penetrating nature of his pianism, at once direct, sensitive, and mysterious, on which his reputation lies.
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These are the notes that I wrote for a CD of Dinu Lipatti’s solo recordings on the Japanese ‘Opus Kura’ label.

The great pianist Dinu Lipatti might have been forgotten today if he had not left a small but significant legacy of recordings. Before his death of Hodgkin’s Disease at age 33 in 1950, Lipatti recorded but a few hours of music for EMI’s sublabel Columbia. Almost 60 years later, this output has been heard internationally, supplemented by a handful of broadcast recordings, and Lipatti’s discs continue to be bestsellers. More than half of Lipatti’s solo recordings were made when he enjoyed a period of remission in July 1950, mere months before his death December 2nd. Recorded in a small radio studio in Geneva, these performances are justly acclaimed for stunningly sensitive playing and highly refined musicality, yet they suffer from compressed piano sound and overly close microphone placement. Lipatti’s sessions at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in 1947 and 1948, on the wonderful Steinway 299 used by great pianists such as Cortot, Schnabel, and Moiseiwitsch in their legendary recordings, provide the clearest insight into his pianistic aptitude. While much of his solo output consists of works that fit on a single 78 (with the notable exception of the Chopin Third Sonata included here), each work in his discography is a gem. This CD unites all of Dinu Lipatti’s issued solo recordings made in EMI’s Abbey Road studios, with a bonus track of his first commercial recording, a four-hands performance with his composition teacher Nadia Boulanger that was recorded in Paris on February 25, 1937.
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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]
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