Dinu Lipatti
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Dinu Lipatti (March 19, 1917 – December 2, 1950) was a Romanian classical pianist and composer whose career was tragically cut short by his death from Hodgkin's disease at age 33.
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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 under Cortot, Nadia Boulanger (with whom he recorded a number of Johannes Brahms' Liebeslieder waltzes in the four-hand arrangement), Paul Dukas (composition) and Charles Münch (conducting) in Paris.
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. As a result, his concertizing receded considerably after the war.
He died at age 33 in Geneva. He is buried at the cemetery of Chêne-Bourg, an outskirt of Geneva close to the border with France, next to his wife Madeleine, a noted piano teacher.
[edit] Technique
Lipatti's playing was hailed as having reached the highest degrees in integrity pianistic technique — which he employed in the quest for musical perfection.
Despite a relatively short playing career and a relatively small recorded legacy, Lipatti is considered among the finest pianists of the 20th century. He is particularly noted for his interpretations of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Frédéric Chopin, but he also made recordings of Franz Liszt, Enescu, Maurice Ravel's Alborada del Gracioso, the Schumann Piano Concerto and Grieg Piano Concerto piano concertos, and Johann Sebastian Bach (the latter two are widely considered to be among the finest ever made). His recording of Chopin's Waltzes has remained in print since its release and has long been a favorite of many classical music-lovers.
A recording of Chopin's First Piano Concerto, originally released under Lipatti's name, was not in fact his contribution — 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.[1]
[edit] Legacy
In addition to his pianistic endeavours, Lipatti was also a noted composer who wrote in a neoclassical style with French and Romanian influences. He was posthumously made a member of the Romanian Academy (in 1997).
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, Liebeslieder (for four hands), 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, Schubert, and Chopin)
